Snapdragon.
—A very favourite pastime at this season. Although so prevalent in England, it is almost unknown in Scotland.—See Book of Days, vol. ii. p. 738.
A writer in the Pantalogia (1813, vol. x.) thus describes this sport:—It is a kind of play, in which brandy is set on fire, and raisins thrown into it, which those who are unused to the sport are afraid to take out, but which may be safely snatched by a quick motion and put blazing into the mouth, which being closed, the fire is at once extinguished. A correspondent of N. & Q. (2nd S. vol. vii. p. 277) suggests as a derivation the German schnapps, spirit, and drache, dragon, and that it is equivalent to spirit-fire. The game has also been called flap- and slap-dragon at different times. Shakspeare, for example, in the second part of Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4, makes Falstaff answer:
“And drinks off candles’ ends for flap-dragons.”
And in Love’s Labours Lost, act v. sc. 1:
“Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.”
See also the Tatler, No. 85.
Christmas Sports.
—Among the various games and sports of an olden Christmas, says Dr. Rimbault, were card-playing, chess, and draughts, jack-pudding in the hall; fiddlers and musicians, who were regaled with a black-jack of beer and a Christmas pie; also singing the wassail, scrambling for nuts, cakes, and apples; dancing round standards decorated with evergreens in the streets; the famous old hobby-horse, hunting owls and squirrels, the fool plough, hot cockles, and the game of hoodman-blind.—N. & Q. 2nd S. vol. xii. p. 489.