And this waye to labour they count it no payne.”
From the time of Strutt, whose book was published in 1801, until the great revival of the game, about fifty years later, there is little to chronicle in the history of the game, which was played at almost all the great schools; but, as regards the rest of the world, only popular in certain localities where great matches were played by those who adhered to ancient customs. In fact, we find from the mention made of the game by Hone, the author of the “Every Day Book and Year Book,” that football for men was looked upon as more or less of a relic of antiquity in England. There was the celebrated match at Kingston on Shrove Tuesday, at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire, the equally celebrated antiquity at Derby, at which city, as reported by Glover, its learned historian, a match had been played every year on Shrove Tuesday since A.D. 217, when a troop of British warriors thrust some Roman troops out of the gates. But what Hone states of England seems never to have applied to Scotland and a few northern counties of England, where the game has enjoyed an uninterrupted popularity among the inhabitants of the country. But perhaps a better idea can be obtained by giving some of Hone’s extracts. On page 152 of his “Year Book” (1852), he quotes, from Hutchinson’s “History of Cumberland,” an account of the football match at Bromfield, on Shrove Tuesday. The scholars of the free school in that place were allowed by custom to “bar out” the master for three days; after a mock fight with popguns and harmless missiles, a truce was solemnly concluded, one of the terms of which was, that a football match should be permitted, as well as some cock-fighting. “After the cock-fighting was ended,” says the account, “the football was thrown down in the churchyard, and the point then contended was, which party should carry it to the house of his respective captain—to Dundraw perhaps or West Newton, a distance of two or three miles. The details of these matches were the general topics of conversation among the villagers, and were dwelt on with hardly less satisfaction than their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in the border wars.” A quotation of an indigenous song is also given, which runs as follows:—
“At Scales, great Tom Barmes got the ba’ in his hand,
And t’wives all ran out and shouted and banned;
Tom Cowan then pulched and flang him ’mang t’ whins,
And he bleddered ‘Od-white-te’ tou’s broken my shins.”
An account of a similar game at Kingston in the year 1815, is given in the “Every Day Book,” vol. i., p. 245.
A correspondent writes to the Editor to say that when travelling by the Hampton Court coach to Kingston on Shrove Tuesday, he was told that it was “Football Day,” and “was not a little amused to see, upon entering Teddington, all the inhabitants securing the glass of their front windows by placing hurdles before them, and some by nailing laths. At Twickenham, Bushy, and Hampton Wick they were all engaged in the same way. Having to stop a few hours at Kingston, I had an opportunity of seeing the whole custom.... At about 12 o’clock the ball is turned loose, and those who can kick it. I observed some persons of respectability following the ball: the game lasts about four hours, when the parties retire to the public-houses.”... The writer goes on to say that the corporation of Kingston tried to put a stop to the practice; but the judges confirmed the right to the game.
Another correspondent, whose letter is published on page 374 of vol. ii. of the same book, describes how at that time (viz. 1827), a game of football was played every Sunday afternoon by Irishmen, upon an open space at Islington. The game commenced at three, and lasted until dusk, men of one county, as a rule, playing against men of another. The same writer goes on to say that when he was a boy he was accustomed to play football on a Sunday morning in the “church-piece” before church-time, in a village in the West of England; but from the tone of the letter it appears very evident that the writer looked upon football at that day as a game more of the past than of the present.
In Scotland, however, football in this age was still a national pastime, and extensively patronized by the upper classes. In 1815 we read of a great football match being played at Carterhaugh in Ettrick Forest, between the Ettrick men and the men of Yarrow; the one party backed by the Earl of Home, and the other by Sir Walter Scott, then Sheriff of the forest. The latter wrote a couple of songs in honour of the occasion, from one of which we quote a verse,—