Roller Polo, played extensively during the winter months in the United States, is practically Ice Polo adapted to the floors of gymnasiums and halls, the players, five on a side, wearing roller-skates. The first professional league was organized in 1883.
HOCK-TIDE, an ancient general holiday in England, celebrated on the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter Sunday. Hock-Tuesday was an important term day, rents being then payable, for with Michaelmas it divided the rural year into its winter and summer halves. The derivation of the word is disputed: any analogy with Ger. hoch, “high,” being generally denied. No trace of the word is found in Old English, and “hock-day,” its earliest use in composition, appears first in the 12th century. The characteristic pastime of hock-tide was called binding. On Monday the women, on Tuesday the men, stopped all passers of the opposite sex and bound them with ropes till they bought their release with a small payment, or a rope was stretched across the highroads, and the passers were obliged to pay toll. The money thus collected seems to have gone towards parish expenses. Many entries are found in parish registers under “Hocktyde money.” The hock-tide celebration became obsolete in the beginning of the 18th century. At Coventry there was a play called “The Old Coventry Play of Hock Tuesday.” This, suppressed at the Reformation owing to the incidental disorder, and revived as part of the festivities on Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth in July 1575, depicted the struggle between Saxons and Danes, and has given colour to the suggestion that hock-tide was originally a commemoration of the massacre of the Danes on St Brice’s Day, the 13th of November A.D. 1002, or of the rejoicings at the death of Hardicanute on the 8th of June 1042 and the expulsion of the Danes. But the dates of these anniversaries do not bear this out.
HOCUS, a shortened form of “hocus pocus,” used in the 17th century in the sense of “to play a trick on any one,” to “hoax,” which is generally taken to be a derivative. “Hocus pocus” appears to have been a mock Latin expression first used as the name of a juggler or conjurer. Thus in Ady’s Candle in the Dark (1655), quoted in the New English Dictionary, “I will speak of one man ... that went about in King James his time ... who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery.” Tillotson’s guess (Sermons, xxvi.) that the phrase was a corruption of hoc est corpus and alluded to the words of the Eucharist, “in ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation,” has frequently been accepted as a serious derivation, but has no foundation. A connexion with a supposed demon of Scandinavian mythology, called “Ochus Bochus,” is equally unwarranted. “Hocus” is used as a verb, meaning to drug, stupefy with opium, &c., for a criminal purpose. This use dates from the beginning of the 19th century.
HODDEN (a word of unknown origin), a coarse kind of cloth made of undyed wool, formerly much worn by the peasantry of Scotland. It was usually made on small hand-looms by the peasants themselves. Grey hodden was made by mixing black and white fleeces together in the proportion of one to twelve when weaving.
HODDESDON, an urban district in the Hertford parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, near the river Lea, 17 m. N. from London by the Great Eastern railway (Broxbourne and Hoddesdon station on the Cambridge line). Pop. (1901), 4711. This is the northernmost of a series of populous townships extending from the suburbs of London along the Lea valley as far as its junction with the Stort, which is close to Hoddesdon. They are in the main residential. Hoddesdon was a famous coaching station on the Old North Road; and the Bull posting-house is mentioned in Matthew Prior’s “Down Hall.” The Lea has been a favourite resort of anglers (mainly for coarse fish in this part) from the time of Izaak Walton, in whose book Hoddesdon is specifically named. The church of St Augustine, Broxbourne, is a fine example of Perpendicular work, and contains interesting monuments, including an altar tomb with enamelled brasses of 1473. Hoddesdon probably covers the site of a Romano-British village.