In the frosty season when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile,
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons;—happy time
It was indeed for all of us, to me
It was a time of rapture! clear and loud
The village clock tolled six! I wheel’d about
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
That cared not for its home. All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud bellowing and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud,
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron, while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy—not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng
To cut across the image of a star
That gleamed upon the ice; and oftentimes
Where we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, shunning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.
Wordsworth.
Skating.
The earliest notice of skating in England is obtained from the earliest description of London. Its historian relates that, “when the great fenne or moore (which watereth the walles of the citie on the north side) is frozen, many young men play upon the yce.” Happily, and probably for want of a term to call it by, he describes so much of this pastime in Moorfields, as acquaints us with their mode of skating: “Some,” he says, “stryding as wide as they may, doe slide swiftly,” this then is sliding; but he proceeds to tell us, that “some tye bones to their feete, and under their heeles, and shoving themselves by a little picked staffe doe slide as swiftly as a birde flyeth in the air, or an arrow out of a crosse-bow.”[37] Here, although the implements were rude, we have skaters; and it seems that one of their sports was for two to start a great way off opposite to each other, and when they met, to lift their poles and strike each other, when one or both fell, and were carried to a distance from each other by the celerity of their motion. Of the present wooden skates, shod with iron, there is no doubt, we obtained a knowledge from Holland.
The icelanders also used the shankbone of a deer or sheep about a foot long, which they greased, because they should not be stopped by drops of water upon them.[38]
It is asserted in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” that Edinburgh produced more instances of elegant skaters than perhaps any other country, and that the institution of a skating club there contributed to its improvement. “I have however seen, some years back,” says Mr. Strutt, “when the Serpentine river was frozen over, four gentlemen there dance, if I may be allowed the expression, a double minuet in skates with as much ease, and I think more elegance, than in a ball room; others again, by turning and winding with much adroitness, have readily in succession described upon the ice the form of all the letters in the alphabet.” The same may be observed there during every frost, but the elegance of skaters on that sheet of water is chiefly exhibited in quadrilles, which some parties go through with a beauty scarcely imaginable by those who have not seen graceful skating. In variety of attitude, and rapidity of movement, the Dutch, who, of necessity, journey long distances on their rivers and canals, are greatly our superiors.