Notes of a Reader.
KNOWLEDGE FOR THE PEOPLE; OR, THE PLAIN WHY AND BECAUSE.
PART III.—Origins and Antiquities.
This contains the Why and Because of the Curiosities of the Calendar; the Customs and Ceremonies of Special Days; and a few of the Origins and Antiquities of Social Life. We quote a page of articles, perhaps, the longest in the Number:—
Cock-fighting.
Why was throwing at cocks formerly customary on Shrove Tuesday?
Because the crowing of a cock once prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacreing their conquerors, another part of our ancestors, the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday, while asleep in their beds.
This is the account generally received, although two lines in an epigram "On a Cock at Rochester," by the witty Sir Charles Sedley, imply that the cock suffered this annual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter's crime, in denying his Lord and Master—
"Mayst thou be punish'd for St. Peter's crime,
And on Shove Tuesday perish in thy prime."