There are two copies of this alphabet among the Harleian manuscripts, one marked 1706, written in the fourteenth century, and another marked 541; whence the above is chiefly taken. At the end of the former we read "XY wyth ESED AND per se—Amen."
Lotteries, in which toys and other trifling prizes were included to be drawn for by children, were in fashion formerly, but by degrees, and especially since the establishment of the State Lottery, they have been magnified into a dangerous species of gambling, and are very properly suppressed by the legislature. They were in imitation of the State Lotteries, with prizes of money proportionable to the value of the tickets, and drawn in like manner. These lotteries are called little goes.
XV.—OBSOLETE PASTIMES.
I have here attempted to give some account of the principal sports practised by the children of this country. I am fully sensible that the list will admit of very many additions, and also that the pastimes which are included in it have been subject to numberless variations. I have, however, set down all that I can recollect, and described them according to the manner in which I have seen the larger part of them performed. It only remains for me to enumerate a few more, which indeed are not well known to me, but may be elucidated hereafter by some more able writer.
129.
This engraving represents a kind of a mock procession, where one of the company, equipped in a royal habit with a crown upon his head, is walking with his mantle displayed by two attendants, and preceded by a zany beating a tambourin with knotted thong. I presume it to be the installation of the King of the Bean, who has already been introduced to the reader.
Below it are two figures, one of them blinded with his hood, having a club upon his shoulder, and approaching towards an iron cauldron, in order no doubt to strike it with his club.