Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/67

42 Under the Norman landlords the sports and exercises of the common Englishman were degraded into rudeness, until "Hodge," the name his insolent master gave him and still gives him, knew nought of athletic skill except a crude form of wrestling with body-holds. The bow, the pike, or spear, and even the quarter-staff, were taken from him, and the skilful use of these weapons was forgotten in the land.

The knight wanted no fighting men except those whom he enlisted and trained for his own or the king's service. The others had better be unskilled, unlearned, undisciplined and uncouth breeders and producers of the necessary wealth from the soil, menials and payers of land-rent.

This degradation of manly and military exercises continued in England for six centuries. It began to change only in the early part of the last century.

In Ireland it continues still. "There are no boxers in Ireland," said a travelled athlete to me the other day. No; the landlord government has been able to continue the Irish popular disorganization. Foot-ball, hurling, wrestling, and boxing were frozen out. When Donnelly defeated the English champions in the early part of this century, it was considered a dangerous example and precedent for Irishmen; and from that time the