XVII.—SLIDING.
Sliding upon the ice appears to have been a very favourite pastime among the youth of this country in former times; at present the use of skates is so generally diffused throughout the kingdom, that sliding is but little practised, except by children and such as cannot afford to purchase them.
Sliding is one of the diversions ascribed to young men of London by Fitzstephen, and, as far as one can judge from his description of the sport, it differed not in the performance from the method used by the boys of our own time; but he adds another kind of pastime upon the ice that is not now in practice: his words are to this effect, "Others make a seat of ice as large as a millstone, and having placed one of their companions upon it, they draw him along, when it sometimes happens that moving on slippery places they all fall down headlong." Instead of these seats of ice, among the moderns, sledges are used, which being extended from a centre, by the means of a strong rope, those who are seated in them are moved round with great velocity, and form an extensive circle. Sledges of this kind were set upon the Thames during the hard frost, in the year 1716, as the following-couplet in a song written upon that occasion [383] plainly proves:
While the rabble in sledges run giddily round,
And nought but a circle of folly is found.
XVIII.—SKATING.
Skating is by no means a recent pastime, and probably the invention proceeded rather from necessity than the desire of amusement.
It is the boast of a northern chieftain, that he could traverse the snow upon skates of wood. [384] I cannot by any means ascertain at what time skating made its first appearance in England, but we find some traces of such an exercise in the thirteenth century, at which period, according to Fitzstephen, it was customary in the winter, when the ice would bear them, for the young citizens of London to fasten the leg bones of animals under the soles of their feet by tying them round their ancles, and then taking a pole shod with iron into their hands, they pushed themselves forward by striking it against the ice, and moved with celerity equal, says the author, to a bird flying through the air, or an arrow from a cross-bow; but some allowance, I presume, must be made for the poetical figure: he then adds, "at times, two of them thus furnished agree to start opposite one to another, at a great distance; they meet, elevate their poles, attack, and strike each other, when one or both of them fall, and not without some bodily hurt; and, even after their fall, are carried a great distance from each other, by the rapidity of the motion, and whatever part of the head comes upon the ice, it is sure to be laid bare."
The wooden skates shod with iron or steel, which are bound about the feet and ancles like the talares of the Greeks and Romans, were most probably brought into England from the Low Countries, where they are said to have originated, and where it is well known they are almost universally used by persons of both sexes when the season permits. In Hoole's translation of the Vocabulary by Commenius, called Orbis Sensualium Pictus, the skates are called scrick-shoes from the German, and in the print at the head of the section, in that work, they are represented longer than those of the present day, and the irons are turned up much higher in the front.
Some modern writers have asserted, that "the metropolis of Scotland has produced more instances of elegant skaters than perhaps any other country whatever, and the institution of a skating-club, about forty years ago, has contributed not a little to the improvement of this amusement." [385] I have, however, seen, some years back, when the Serpentine river in Hyde Park was frozen over, four gentlemen there dance, if I may be allowed the expression, a double minuet in skates, with as much ease, and I think more elegance, than in a ball room; others again, by turning and winding with much adroitness, have readily in succession described upon the ice the form of all the letters in the alphabet.