“Congleton rare, Congleton rare,
Sold the Bible to pay for a bear.”
The same legend attaches to Clifton, a village near Rugby:
“Clifton-upon-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire,
Sold the Church Bible to buy a bear.”
In Pulleyn’s “Etymological Compendium,”[362] we are told that “this cruel amusement is of African origin, and was introduced into Europe by the Romans.” It is further alluded to by Shakespeare in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), “dancing and bear-baiting;” and further on in the same play (ii. 5) Fabian says, “he brought me out o’ favor with my lady about a bear-baiting here;” and Macbeth (v. 7) relates:
“They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.”[363]
And in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 1), Octavius says:
“we are at the stake,
And bay’d about with many enemies.”
Boar. It appears that in former times boar-hunting was a favorite recreation; many allusions to which we find in old writers. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the destruction of a wild boar ranked among the deeds of chivalry,[364] and “won for a warrior almost as much renown as the slaying an enemy in the open field.” So dangerous, too, was boar-hunting considered, that Shakespeare represents Venus as dissuading Adonis from the perilous practice:
“‘O be advised! thou know’st not what it is,
With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.
*****
His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm’d,
Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm’d;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.’”
Such hunting expeditions were generally fatal to some of the dogs, and occasionally to one or more of the hunters. An old tradition of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire,[365] asserts that every burgess, at his admission to the freedom of the borough, anciently presented to the mayor a boar’s head, or an equivalent in money, when the animal could not be procured. The old seal of the mayor of Grimsby represents a boar hunt. The lord, too, of the adjacent manor of Bradley, was obliged by his tenure to keep a supply of these animals in his wood, for the entertainment of the mayor and burgesses.[366] A curious triennial custom called the “Rhyne Toll,” is observed at Chetwode, a small village about five miles from Buckingham.[367] According to tradition, it originated in the destruction of an enormous wild boar—the terror of the surrounding county—by one of the lords of Chetwode; who, after fighting with it for four hours on a hot summer’s day, eventually killed it: