"These elegant and highly pathetic customs of South Wales make the best impression on the mind. What can be more affecting than to see all the youth of both sexes in a village, and in every village through which the corpse passes, dressed in their best apparel, and strewing with sweet-scented flowers the ways along which one of their beloved neighbours goes to his or her marriage-bed."
Malkin's Scenery, Antiquities, and Biography of
South Wales, 4to. 1804. p. 606.
CHAPTER VIII.
VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE CONTINUED—DIVERSIONS.
The attempt to describe all the numerous rural diversions which were prevalent during the age of Shakspeare, would be, in the highest degree, superfluous; for the greatest part of them, it is evident, must remain, with such slight or gradual modification as to require but little notice. It will be, therefore, our endeavour, in the course of this chapter, after giving a catalogue of the principal country-diversions of the era in question, to dwell only upon those which are now either entirely obsolete, or which have subsequently undergone such alterations as to render their former state an object of novelty and curiosity.
This catalogue may be taken, with tolerable accuracy, from Randal Holme of Chester, and from Robert Burton; the former enumerating the games and diversions of the sixteenth century, and the latter those of the prior part of the seventeenth. If to these, we add the notices to be drawn from Shakspeare, the sketch will, there is reason to suppose, prove sufficiently extensive.
In the list of Randal Holme will be found the names of some juvenile sports, which are now perhaps no longer explicable; this poetical antiquary, however, shall speak for himself.
"—— They dare challenge for to throw the sledge;