Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/114

94 faith that neither doubted nor despaired. Like happy children—if uncouth and ill-mannered—they played their riotous games of Blind Man's Buff or Hoodman Blind, as they called it, Hot Cockles, Battledore and Shuttlecock, Prisoner's Base, and Frog in the Middle; they danced and they "tumbled"; they played with balls, with whipping-tops, with ninepins, with bowls; they revelled in cock-fighting and bull-baiting, and derived amusement from many another pastime. Martial sports, too, were developing, and the knightly tournament played its part in the lives of the English nobility. Perhaps the spirit of knightly chivalry attained its highest development in the fourteenth century. Its effect on the minds of Englishmen was distinctly good. It "inspired a thousand generous thoughts and heroic actions, and laid the foundation of that most perfect character, the true English gentleman;" but too often the spectacle degenerated into odd extravagances and added fire to passions already fierce and uncontrolled, so that the splendid arena was defiled with brutal and regrettable incidents. Magnificent indeed was the armour of the knight as he tilted at the tournament, rich