[168:B] Watchet-coloured, pale blue. Strutt.
[168:C] Rochet, a lawn garment resembling a surplice gathered at the wrists. Strutt.
[168:D] Baudekin, a cloth of gold tissue, with figures in silk, for female dress. Strutt.
[169:A] The mole-taker, in this place, personates the character of the fool or domestic buffoon.
[170:A] The management of the hobby-horse appears to have been the most difficult part of the May-day festivities, and from the following passage in an old play, to have required some preparatory discipline. A character personating this piece of pageantry, and angry with the mayor of the town as being his rival, calls out, "Let the mayor play the hobby-horse among his brethren, an he will, I hope our towne-lads cannot want a hobby-horse. Have I practic'd my reines, my careeres, my pranckers, my ambles, my false trotts, my smooth ambles and Canterbury paces, and shall master mayor put me besides the hobby-horse? Have I borrowed the fore horse bells, his plumes and braveries, nay had his mane new shorne and frizl'd, and shall the mayor put me besides the hobby-horse?" The Vow breaker, by Sampson.
[170:B] The morris-dance in this description of the May-game seems to have been performed chiefly by the fool, with the occasional assistance of the hobby-horse, which was always decorated with bells, and the dragon.
[171:A] Strutt's Queenhoo-Hall, a romance, vol. i. p. 13. et seq.
[171:B] Act iii. sc. 2. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 198.
[171:C] Act iii. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 53, 54.
[172:A] Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althorpe. 1603. fol. edit. vol. i. p. 99.