Lear too, and Kent, knew something about “hacking” and “tripping.” Listen to this, “Lear,” Act i. Scene 4.
Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?
Steward. I’ll not be strucken, my lord.
Kent. Nor tripped neither, you base football-player (tripping up his heels).
Lear. I thank thee, fellow.
Lear, you see, breaks out into an exclamation of praise, when he sees a neat “trip” brought off by Kent.
There are still some ancient customs in relation to the game of football, which belong to no particular age, as many of them endured through many ages, but which may well be set out here lest they should pass out of mind. The following is from MS. Harl. 2150, fol. 235:—“It hath been the custom, time out of mind, for the shoemakers yearly on Shrove Tuesday to deliver to the drapers, in the presence of the Mayor of Chester, at the cross on the Rodehee, one ball of leather called a foote-ball, of the value of three shillings and fourpence and above, to play at from thence to the Common Hall of the said city; which practice was productive of much inconvenience; and this year (1540), by consent of the parties concerned, the ball was changed into six glayves of silver of the like value, as a reward for the best runner that day upon the aforesaid Rodehee.”
At the parish of Scone, in Perthshire, a similar game appears to have been played every Shrove Tuesday, between the bachelors and the married men, from two o’clock until sunset. The game was initiated by the throwing up of the ball in the neighbourhood of the market cross at Scone, and the account of it may well be given in the words of the author of “The Statistical Account of Scotland,” as quoted by Hone in his Year-Book of 1838. The game was this: “He who at any time got the ball into his hands ran with it till overtaken by one of the opposite party, and then, if he could shake himself loose from those of the opposite party who seized him, he ran on; if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no person was allowed to kick it. The object of the married men was to hang it, that is, to put it three times into a small hole in the moor, which was the ‘dool,’ or limit, on the one hand; that of the bachelors was to drown it, or dip it three times in a deep place in the river, the limit on the other; the party who could effect either of these objects won the game; if neither won, the ball was cut into equal parts at sunset. In the course of the play there was usually some violence between the parties; but it is a proverb in this part of the country, that ‘All is fair at the ball at Scone.’” This annual game is supposed to have been established in commemoration of the victory of a parishioner of Scone over an Italian braggadocio of chivalrous times; and every man in the parish was compelled to play. Thus, in this Perthshire game we seem to find the rough and rude instance of the original game in Scotland, and the first instance of compulsory football. It should further be remarked, that the same antiquary gives an account of an annual Shrove Tuesday football match between the married women of Inverness and the spinsters of the same parish, which, according to him, invariably resulted in the triumph of the married women. It appears, therefore, that the female elevens which occasionally appear in North Country football fields, are not without a respectable historical precedent for their acts. Still, it is pardonable to say that the game is not exactly suitable to their physical constitution; and even the sturdy lass of Inverness must have been somewhat out of place in the game which Waller describes with reasonable accuracy in the following lines:—
“As when a sort of lustie shepherd’s boy
Their force at football; care of victory