Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/224

 200 Collectanea.

situated at the junction of three counties, Lincoln, Northampton, and Rutland, though it actually lies in the two former. Possibly the men of these shires anciently met by the Welland to observe traditional rites intended to secure the prosperity of their terri- tories.

According to legend, however, the sport was instituted as late as the reign of King John by Earl Warren, who looking down from his castle saw two bulls fighting for a cow in the meadows below, when a butcher, the owner of one of the bulls, set his mastiff on the beast to force it into the town, which action caused all the butchers' dogs of the place to run together in pursuit of the animal, to the high diversion of the earl (Butcher's Stamford, 1646).

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the bullards who chased the bull had "uncouth and antic dresses." And in 1789 a bull was driven into the town by a woman named Anne Blades, who was attired in a smock-frock. " This," observes the author of the Chronology of Stamford, P- 52, "appears to have been the origin of the Bull-woman, who until 1828 used on the morning of the 13th of November to dress in blue from top to toe, carry a blue bull-stick, and collect money from the inhabitants, which was appropriated to the purchase of the bull and her own benefit." But notwithstanding this opinion, it may be held that the Bull- woman was an old institution, for at Mere, in \\'iltshire, is a spot called the Bull-ring, where bulls were baited till 1820 or there- abouts," and an old gentleman who died about 1891 asserted that he could recollect a woman named Dolby, who was the last person who rode the bull to the place for the purpose of being baited. She was called " Bull-riding Betty " (The Antiquary, vol. xxvii., p. 235, June 1893). Hence it may be concluded that Anne Blades and her successors were not the only women who acted as officials on such occasions.

A carefully-compiled and detailed account of the Stamford bull- running, collected from various sources, is given by Mr. Burton in Old Lincolnshire, vol. i. (i 883-1 S85), from whom the following information is quoted :

" Hogsheads were placed at various points, round which the bullards might manoeuvre when hard pressed by the furious beast, and often unfortunate were they who could not fall back upon one of these redoubts." So fond were the people of the