X.—BOB-CHERRY.
This is "a play among children," says Johnson, "in which the cherry is hung so as to bob against the mouth," or rather so high as to oblige them to jump in order to catch it in their mouth, for which reason the candidate is often unsuccessful. Hence the point in the passage which Johnson quotes from Arbuthnot. "Bob-cherry teaches at once two noble virtues, patience and constancy; the first in adhering to the pursuit of one end, the latter in bearing a disappointment."
118. Bob-Cherry.
In this engraving, taken from a MS. of the fourteenth century, in the Royal Library, [1129] we see a sport of this kind where four persons are playing, but the object they are aiming at is much larger than a cherry, and was probably intended to represent an apple or an orange. "It was customary," we are told by Mr. Brand, "on the eve of All-Hallows, for the young people in the north to dive for apples, or catch at them when stuck at one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths, only having their hands tied behind their back." [1130]
119. Diving for Apples.