Page:Glossary of words in use in Cornwall.djvu/352

 ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. XIX red hair quite inadmissible. Sometiines feyourable black-haired boys or men eo about and ask to be allowed to perform this function. They arepaid or regaled with Christmas fare. The same custom is followed at the opening of the New Year. I myself once, rather unwillingly, performed this duty. Some neigh- bours had passed Christmas Eve, or New Year's Eve (I think the latter), at my house. They remained till after twelve, and I (being duly qualified in respect of the colour of my hair) was entreated to go home with one family and let in the festiysd, which I accordingly did. FOOTBALL* Formerly at festal seasons great games of football were played in this neighbourhood, sometimes between Honleyand Meltham, and some- times between Almondbury and Farnley. These were played in a style which would astonish the athletes of our days. The last game between this village and Farnley is said to have taken place on old Christmas Day, 1819, when the bim was turned out in Farnley field& The Farnley men were to drive it across Thurstonland boundary, and the Almond- bury men across Almondbury boundary ; thus they had a course of extremely rough country of about three miles long. Many ferocious kicks were given and received on this occasion ; even when the ball was scores of yards away men stood kicking each other violently, and a portion of wall upwards of a rood was thrown down in the contest in one -place. The kicks were by no means child's play, as they were all adnunistered in. clogs. The Farnley people won. For a full generation the game has Men left to schoolboys, and has been revived in a milder form. The idea that it was a thing of the past was an error, arising from ignorance of the fact that the passion for the game is almost innate in mankind. It is more than an even chance that if a couple of street Arabs were passing quietly along the road and caught sight of an old shoe or cabbage stump, they would rush at it with fury in their looks, and would kick it about till they were tired ; if, moreover, they happened to be fond of rough music, and the object of attraction were an old tin can, they would poise it until it had neither shape nor sound left in it. Without taking this into consideration, we must consider the game an enormous advance in the direction of civilization, when compared with the roueh and cruel sports of our ancestors, and as contrasting very fiavouraoly with many still left among us. SHROVE TUESDAY. At 11 a.m. on this day a bell is rung at the church, and aL work is supposed to be over for the day, and formerly all prentice lads were con- sidered to be loose for twelve hours. On the first anniversary, in 1849, after I had entered on my duties as master of the Grammar Schooly the pupils took care to inform me of the custom, and, nothing loth, I dismissed them for the day, which practice has been continued to this time. In 1873 the bells being unhung, during the restoration of the churchy when two new treble bellB were added, much anxiety was