Thus poets, passing time away.
Like children at hot-cockles play;
All strike by turn, and Will is strook
(And he lies down that writes a book).
Have at thee, Will, for now I come,
Spread thy hand faire upon thy bomb;
For thy much insolence, bold bard,
And little sense I strike thus hard.
“Whose hand was that?” “’Twas Jaspar Mayne.”
“Nay, there you’re out; lie down again.”
With Gondibert, prepare, and all
See where the doctor comes to maul
The author’s hand, ’twill make him reel;
No, Will lies still, and does not feel.
That book’s so light, ’tis all one whether
You strike with that or with a feather.
But room for one, new come to town,
That strikes so hard, he’ll knock him down;
The hand he knows, since it the place
Has toucht more tender than his face;
Important sheriff, now thou lyst down,
We’ll kiss thy hands, and clap our own.
The game of hot-cockles has only become obsolete in recent times, if it be even now quite out of use. Most readers will remember the passage in Gay’s “Pastorals:”— As at hot-cockles once I laid me down,
And felt the weighty hand of many a clown,
Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I
Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye.
This passage is aptly illustrated by the cut from the tapestry. The same Bodleian manuscript gives us a playful group, reproduced in our cut [No. 163], which Strutt believes to be the game called, in more modern times, “frog-in-the-middle.” One of the party, who played frog, sat on the ground, while his comrades surrounded and buffeted him, until he could catch and hold one of them, who then had to take his place. In our cut, the players are females.
No. 162. Shepherds and Shepherdesses.
No. 163. The Game of Frog-in-the-Middle.
Games of questions and commands, and of forfeits, were also common in mediæval society. Among the poems of Baudouin and Jean de Condé (poets of the thirteenth century), we have a description of a game of this kind. “One time,” we are told, “there was play among ladies and damsels; there were among them both clever and handsome; they took up many games, until, at last, they elected a queen to play at roy-qui-ne-ment (the king who does not lie); she, whom they chose, was clever at commands and at questions:”— Une foi ierent en dosnoi
Entre dames et damoiselles;
De cointes i ot et de belles.
De plusieurs deduits s’entremistrent,
Et tant c’une royne fistrent
Pour jouer au roy-qui-ne-ment.
Ele s’en savoit finement
Entremettre de commander
Et de demandes demander.
—Barbazan Fabliaux, tom. i. p. 100.
The aim of the questions was, of course, to provoke answers which would excite mirth; and the sequel of the story shows the great want of delicacy which prevailed in mediæval society. Another sort of amusement was furnished, by what may be called games of chance; in which the players, in turn, drew a character at hazard. These characters were generally written in verse, in burlesque and often very coarse language, and several sets of them have been preserved in old manuscripts. They consist of a series of alternate good and bad characters, sometimes only designed for females, but at others for women and men: two of these sets (printed in my “Anecdota Literaria”) were written in England; one, of the thirteenth century, in Anglo-Norman, the other, of the fifteenth century, in English. From these we learn that the game, in England, was called Rageman, or Ragman, and that the verses, describing the characters, were written on a roll called Ragman’s Roll, and had strings attached to them, by which each person drew his or her chance. The English set has a short preface, in which the author addresses himself to the ladies, for whose special use it was compiled:— My ladyes and my maistresses echone,
Lyke hit unto your humbylle wommanhede
Resave in gré (good part) of my sympille persone
This rolle, which withouten any drede
Kynge Ragman me bad mesoure in brede,
And cristyned yt the meroure of your chaunce;
Draweth a strynge, and that shal streight yow leyde
Unto the verry path of your governaunce—
i. e. it will tell you exactly how you behave yourself, what is your character. This game is alluded to by the poet Gower in the “Confessio Amantis:”— Venus, whiche stant withoute lawe,
In non certeyne, but as men drawe
Of Ragemon upon the chaunce,
Sche leyeth no peys (weight) in the balaunce.
The ragman’s roll, when rolled up for use, would present a confused mass of strings hanging from it, probably with bits of wax at the end, from which the drawer had to select one. This game possesses a peculiar historical interest. When the Scottish nobles and chieftains acknowledged their dependence on the English crown in the reign of Edward I., the deed by which they made this acknowledgment, having all their seals hung to it, presented, when rolled up, much the appearance of the roll used in this game; and hence, no doubt, they gave it in derision the name of the Ragman’s Roll. Afterwards it became the custom to call any roll with many signatures, or any long catalogue, the various headings of which were perhaps marked by strings, by the same name. This game of chance or fortune was continued, under other names, to a late period. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the burlesque characters were often inscribed on the back of roundels, which were no doubt dealt round to the company like cards, with the inscribed side downwards.
No. 164. Ball-Playing.
Sometimes the ladies and young men indulged within doors in more active games—among which we may mention especially different games with the ball, and also, perhaps, the whipping-top. We learn from many sources that hand-ball was from a very early period a favourite recreation with the youth of both sexes. It is a subject not unfrequently met with in the marginal drawings of mediæval manuscripts. The annexed example (cut [No. 164]), from MS. Harl. No. 6563, represents apparently two ladies playing with a ball. In other instances, a lady and a gentleman are similarly occupied. Our cut [No. 165] is taken from one of the carvings of the miserere seats in Gloucester cathedral. The long tails of the hoods belong to the costume of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The whipping-top was also a plaything of considerable antiquity; I think it may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. Our cut [No. 166] is taken from one of the marginal drawings of a well-known manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) of the beginning of the fourteenth century. It may be remarked that the knots on the lashes merely mark a conventional manner of representing a whip, for every boy knows that a knotted whip would not do for a top. Mediæval art was full of such conventionalities.
