Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/375

 Rh dusky antiquity, continue to survive in England in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

One fact worthy of attention is that the game is connected with the neighbourhood of a church and the remains of an old cross. Very possibly the site of the building may have been sacred ground before the erection of any Christian temple, since it is beyond dispute that the places hallowed by heathen piety, and the ceremonies connected with them, were at times taken over by the early missionaries and adapted to the exigencies of their own creed, with the aim of reconciling converts to its unfamiliar tenets. That some relationship existed till comparatively lately between ball-play and ecclesiastical festivals is sufficiently clear from several practices familiar to the student of folklore, which practices appear reasonless unless they can be looked on as survivals from prechristian ritual.

Some few years ago Cabsow or Shinup, a ball-game, was still popular at Cleethorpes, near Great Grimsby, at Yule. "On Christmas day every man was supposed to play it. The game somewhat resembled hocky, more so than golf. All that was needed was a good ground-ash stick, well turned up at the end, and a wooden ball. With more or less well-defined rules the ball was sent by the sticks from one side to another, like a football from player to player. Every one is aware that football is an amusement proper to Shrove Tuesday, and evidence exists that it formerly gave rise to eager contests on that day in Lincolnshire. The Lincoln Gazette for February 12th, 1839, has a paragraph on football-playing among its Caistor news, which states that "This illegal practice has prevailed time immemorial at Caistor, of playing at football in the market-place and other public streets in the town, on Shrove Tuesday, annually, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants passing along the streets, besides