Away go the fourteen men in hot pursuit, gypsies, shepherds, and light-heeled fellows of all sorts, helter-skelter; some losing their foothold at once, and rolling or slipping down; some still keeping their footing, but tottering at every step; one or two, with their bodies well thrown back, striking their heels firmly into the turf, and keeping a good balance. They are all in the road together, but here several fall on their faces, and others give in; the rest cross it in a moment, and are away down the manger. Here the sheep-walks, which run temptingly along the sides of the manger, but if they would look forward will take the runners very little nearer the bottom where the wheel lies, mislead many; and amongst the rest, the fleetest of the gypsies, who makes off at full speed along one of them. Two or three men go still boldly down the steep descent, falling and picking themselves up again; and Jonathan Legg, of Childrey, is the first of these. He has now gained the flat ground at the bottom, where after a short stagger he brings himself up, and makes straight for the umpires and the wheel. The gypsy now sees his error; and turning short down the hill, comes into the flat, running some twenty yards behind Jonathan. In another hundred yards he would pass him, for he gains at every stride; but it is too late; and we, at the top of the hill, cheer loudly when we see Jonathan, the man who had gone straight all the way, touch the wheel a clear ten yards before his more active rival.
I should have liked to have seen the boys’ races down the manger, but was afraid of missing some other sport, so I left farmer Whitfield at his troublesome post, shouting out the names of the boys and trying to get them into line, and went back into the Castle, where I found a crowd round the greased pole; and when I got up to it, saw a heavy-looking fellow, standing some five feet up the pole, with one foot in a noose of cord depending from a large gimlet, and the other leg hooked round the pole. He held in his right hand another large gimlet, which he was preparing to screw into the pole to support a second noose, and gazed stolidly down at a Committee-man, who was objecting “that this wasn’t fair climbing—that if gimlets and nooses were to be allowed, he could get up himself.” I thought he was right; but public feeling seemed to side with the climber; so the Committee-man gave in, declaring that there would be no more legs of mutton to climb for, if any thing but arms and legs were to be used.
“Rather a slow bit of sport this,” I said to an old gray-headed man, who was leaning on his stick at my side, and staring up at the performer.
“Ees, Zur,” answered he, “I dwon’t knaow but what it be.”
“Do you call it fair climbing, now?”
“Auh, bless’ee, not I. I minds seein’ the young chaps when I wur a buoy, climin’ maypowls a deal higher nor that, dree at a time. But now-a-days ’um be lazy, and afraid o’ spwiling their breeches wi’ the grase.”
“Are there any maypoles about here now?”
“Never a one as I knows on, Zur, for twenty mile round. The last as I remembers wur the Longcott one, and Parson Watts of Uffington had he sawed up nigh forty year ago, for fear lest there should ha’ been some murder done about ’un.”