Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/323

 lot of the eighteenth-century peasant must have been even more monotonous than that of the country squire or the vicar of many parishes. He was totally uneducated, unable to read or write; his amusements were few, for the sports that had brightened the rural life of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been swept away by the Puritans, and the sports of today were still in their infancy. Cricket indeed was coming in, but as yet the cricket bat was not invented, and the game seems to have been popular with country girls as well as boys. In 1775 a cricket match was played between six unmarried men and the same number of unmarried women, and though one woman made seventeen runs, or "notches," as they were then called, the men won the game. Sometimes a match was played by girls only, eleven on either side, "dressed all in white," and the Derby Mercury records the fact that "the girls bowled, batted, ran, and caught as well as any men could do." Wrestling was popular among the natives, as were also cock-fighting and bull-baiting.

Then, as now, the village alehouse was the popular resort. Here they heard any news that might be stirring: a stray paper would unfold to