In the hamlet of Pinner, at Harrow-on-the-Hill, the cruel custom of throwing at cocks was formerly made a matter of public celebrity, as appears by an ancient account of receipts and expenditures. The money collected at this sport was applied in aid of the poor-rates.

"1622. Received for cocks at Shrovetide
Received for cocks in Towne.
Out of Towne.

1628.

12. 04.

19o. 10d.

0o. 69",

This custom appears to have continued as late as the year 1680. (Lysons's Environs of London, ii. 588.)

By the following extract from Baron's Cyprian Academy, 1648, p. 53, it should seem to appear that hens also were formerly the objects of this barbarous persecution. A clown is speaking:- "By the maskins I would give the best cow in my yard to find out this raskall; and I would thrash him as I did the henne last Shrove Tuesday." The subsequent passage in Bishop Hall's Virgidemarium, 1598, iv. 5, seems to imply that a hen was a usual present at Shrovetide, as also a pair of gloves at Easter :

"For Easter gloves, or for a Shrovetide Hen,

Which bought to give, he takes to sell again."

In Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, we find the ploughman's feasting days or holidays, thus enumerated: 1. Plough Monday; 2. Shrove Tuesday, when, after confession, he is suffered to thresh the fat hen; 3. Sheepshearing, with wafers and cakes; 4. Wake Day, or the vigil of the church Saint of the village, with custards; 5. Harvesthome, with a fat goose; 6. Seedcake, a festival kept at the end of wheat-sowing, when he is to be feasted with seed-cakes, pasties, and furmenty pot.

"At Shrovetide to shroving go thresh the fat hen,
If blindfold can kill her, then give it thy men.'

These lines in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 80, are thus explained in a note. "The hen is hung at a fellow's back, who has also some horse-bells about him; the rest of the fellows are blinded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and

nis hen; other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another well favouredly: but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will endear their sweethearts with a peeping hole, while the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this, the hen is boiled with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are made. She that is noted for lying a-bed long, or any other miscarriage, hath the first pancake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dog's share at last, for no one will own it their due." This latter part of the note is to illustrate the following lines:—

"Maids, fritters, and pancakes, y-now see ye make,

Let Slut have one pancake for company sake."

Heath, in his account of the Scilly Islands, p. 120, has the following passage: "On a Shrove Tuesday each year, after the throwing at cocks is over, the boys in this island have a custom of throwing stones in the evening against the doors of the dwellers' houses; a privilege they claim from time immemorial, and put in practice without control, for finishing the day's sport. I could never learn from whence this custom took its rise, but am informed that the same custom is now used in several provinces of Spain, as well as in some parts of Cornwall. The terms demanded by the boys are pancakes, or money, to capitulate."

Mr. Jones informed me that, in Wales, such hens as did not lay eggs before Shrove Tuesday were, when he was a boy, destined to be threshed on that day by a man with a flail, as being no longer good for anything. If the man hit the hen, and consequently killed her, he got her for his pains.

"A learned foreigner (qu. if not Erasmus ?) says, the English eat a certain cake on Shrove Tuesday, upon which they immediately run mad, and kill their poor cocks.Quoddam placentæ genus, quo comesto, protinus insaniunt, et gallos trucidant;' as if nothing less than some strong infatuation could account for continuing so barbarous a custom among Christians and cockneys." Note to Veillè à la Campagne, or the Simnel, a Tale,' 1745, p. 16.

[SHYING AT COCKS. Probably in imitation of the barbarous custom of " shying," or throwing at the living animal. The "cock" was a representation of a bird or a beast, a

man or horse, or some device, with a stand projecting on all sides, but principally behind the figure. These were made of lead cast in moulds. They were shyed at with dumps from a small distance agreed upon by the parties, generally regulated by the size or weight of the dump, and the value of the cock. If the thrower overset or knocked down the cock, he won it; if he failed, he lost his dump. Shy for Shy.-This was played at by two boys, each having a cock placed at a certain distance, generally about four or five feet asunder, the players standing behind their cocks, and throwing alternately; a bit of stone or wood was generally used to throw with, and the cock was won by him who knocked it down. These games had their particular times or seasons; and when any game was out, as it was termed, it was lawful to steal the thing played with; this was called smugging, and it was expressed by the boys in a doggrel,—

"Tops are in, spin 'em agin;

Tops are out, smugging about."

Hone's Every-Day Book, i. 253.]

PANCAKE CUSTOMS.

In the north of England Shrove Tuesday is called vulgarly Fasten's E'en; the succeeding day being Ash-Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten Fast.'

At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the great bell of St. Nicholas's church is tolled at twelve o'clock at noon on this day; shops are immediately shut up, offices closed, and all kinds of business ceases: a little carnival ensuing for the remaining part of the day. [At Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, the old curfew bell, which was anciently rung in that town for the extinction and relighting of "all fire and candle light," still exists, and has from time immemorial been regularly rung on the morning of Shrove Tuesday, at four o'clock, after which hour the inhabitants are at liberty to make and eat pancakes, until the 1 ["St. Taffy is no sooner gone,

But Pancake day is coming on:

Now eat your fill, drink if you're dry,
For Lent comes on immediately.
Now days exceed the nights in length,

And Titan's heat improves in strength."

Poor Robin's Almanack, 1731.]

bell rings at eight o'clock at night. This custom is observed so closely, that after that hour not a pancake remains in the town.] "Let glad Shrove Tuesday bring the pancake thin,

Or fritter rich, with apples stored within."

Oxford Sausage, p. 22.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1790, p. 256 says that at Westminster School, upon Shrove Tuesday, the under clerk of the college enters the school, and preceded by the beadle and other officers, throws a large pancake over the bar which divides the upper from the under school. A gentleman, who was formerly one of the masters of that school, confirmed the anecdote to me, with this alteration, that the cook of the seminary brought it into the school, and threw it over the curtain which separated the forms of the upper from those of the under scholars. I have heard of a similar custom at Eton school.

[At Baldock, in Hertfordshire, Shrove Tuesday is long anticipated by the children, who designate it as Dough-nut day; it being usual to make a good store of small cakes fried in hog's lard, placed over the fire in a brass skillet, called doughnuts, wherewith the youngsters are plentifully regaled. In Dorsetshire boys go round, begging for pancakes, singing,

"I be come a shrovin

Vor a little pankiak,

A bit o' bread o' your biakin,

Or a little truckle cheese o' your miakin.

If you'll gi' me a little, I'll ax no more,

If you don't gi' me nothin, I'll rottle your door."]

The manuscript in the British Museum before cited, Status Schola Etonensis, 1560, mentions a custom of that school on Shrove Tuesday, of the boys being allowed to play from eight o'clock for the whole day; and of the cook's coming in and fastening a pancake to a crow, which the young crows are calling upon, near it, at the school-door. "Die Martis Car

nis-privii luditur ad horam octavam in totum diem: venit coquus, affigit laganum cornici juxta illud pullis corvorum invocantibus eum, ad ostium scholæ." The crows generally have hatched their young at this season.'

"Most places in England have Eggs and Collops (slices of bacon) on Shrove Monday, Pancakes on Tuesday, and Fritters on the Wednesday in the same week for dinner."-Gent. Mag. Aug. 1790, p. 719. From The Westmoreland Dialect,' by A. Walker, 8vo., 1790, it appears that cock

Shakespeare, in the following passage, alludes to the wellknown custom of having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, in the following string of comparisons put into the mouth of the clown in All's Well that Ends Well." As fit as Tib's rush for Tib's forefinger, as a Pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a Morris for Mayday, &c. In Gayton's Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, p. 99, speaking of Sancho Panza's having converted a cassock into a wallet, our pleasant annotator observes, "It was serviceable, after this greasie use, for nothing but to preach at a Carnivale or Shrove Tuesday, and to tosse Pancakes in after the exercise; or else (if it could have been conveighed thither) nothing more proper for the man that preaches the Cook's Sermon at Oxford, when that plump society rides upon their governours horses to fetch in the Enemie, the Flie." That there was such a custom at Oxford, let Peshall, in his history of that city, be a voucher, who, speaking of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, p. 280, says, "To this Hospital cooks from Oxford flocked, bringing in on Whitsun-week the Fly." Aubrey saw this ceremony performed in 1642. He adds: "On Michaelmas-day they rode thither again, to convey the Fly away." (Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme. MS. Lansd. 226.) In the Life of Anthony à Wood, p. 46, are some curious particulars relating to indignities shown at that time (1647) to freshmen at Oxford on Shrove Tuesday. A brass pot full of cawdle was made by the cook at the freshmen's charge, and set before the fire in the College-hall. "Afterwards every freshman, according to seniority, was to pluck off his gowne and band, and if possible to make himself look like a scoundrell. This done, they were conducted each after the other to the high table, and there made to stand on a forme placed thereon, from whence they were to speak their speech with an audible voice to the company: which, if well done, the person that spoke it was to have a cup of caudle, and no salted drinke; if indifferently, some caudle and some salted drinke; but if dull, nothing was given to him but salted drink, or salt put in

fighting and casting Pancakes are still practised on Shrove Tuesday in that county. Thus, p. 31, "Whaar ther wor tae be Cock-feightin, for it war Pankeak Tuesday." And p. 35, "We met sum Lads and Lasses gangin to kest their Pankeaks." It appears from Middleton's Masque of the World tossed at Tennis, which was printed in 1620, that batter was used on Shrove Tuesday at that time, no doubt for the purpose of making pancakes.