JACK O’ LENT.
This was a puppet, formerly thrown at, in our own country, during Lent, like Shrove-cocks. Thus, in “The Weakest goes to the Wall,” 1600, we read of “a mere anatomy, a Jack of Lent;” and in Greene’s “Tu quoque,” of “a boy that is throwing at his Jack o’ Lent;” and again, in the comedy of “Lady Alimony,” 1659:
———“Throwing cudgels
At Jack a Lents or Shrove-cocks.”
Also, in Ben Jonson’s “Tale of a Tub:”
———“On an Ash-Wednesday,
When thou didst stand six weeks the Jack o’ Lent,
For boys to hurl three throws a penny at thee.”
So, likewise, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Tamer tamed:”
———“If I forfeit,
Make me a Jack o’ Lent, and break my shins
For untagg’d points and counters.”
Further, in Quarles’ “Shepheard’s Oracles,” 1646, we read:
“How like a Jack a Lent
He stands, for boys to spend their Shrove-tide throws,
Or like a puppet made to frighten crows.”[72]