Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/87

 and Sentiments. 67 affembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been ufually chofen near a fountain, or Ibme objeft hallowed by the popular creed, for cuftoms of this kind were generally aflbciated with religious feehngs which tended to confecrate and prote6t them, Thefe holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minftrels, like thofe reprefented in our cut No. 41, repaired to them to exhibit their Ikill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themfelves in running, or leaping, or wreftling. Thefe games attraded merchants, and gradually became the centres of extenlive fairs. Such was the cafe wdth one of the moft celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well fuited for fach fefti- vities as thofe of which we are fpeaking. A fpring m the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), becaufe every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptift, the boys and youths of the neigh- bourhood affembled there, and, " after the manners of the Englilli, prac- tifed wreftling and other boyilli games, and mutually applauded one another with fongs and mufical inftruments j whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a cuflom for a crowd of fellers and buyers to affemble there on the fame day for the purpofe of commerce." * This is a curious and a rather rare allufion to an Anglo-Saxon wake. One of the great recreations of the Anglo-Saxons was hunting, for which the immenfe forefts, which then covered a great portion of this ifland, gave a wide fcope. The moft auftere and pious, as well as the moft warlike, of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, were paffionately attached to the pleafures of the chafe. According to the writer who has affumed alia hidicra exercebant puerilia, et cantilenis et musicis instiumentis sibi invicem applaudebant, unde propter turbam piierorum et puellarum illic conciirrentium, mos inolevit ut in eodem die illic conveniret negotiandi crratiii turba vendentium et ementiuin, — MS. Harl. No. 3601, fol. 12, v°. the
 * Pueri et adolescentes, . . . illic convenientes, more An,s;loriim luctamina et