Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/175

 ANCIENT CUSTOMS IN GAMES USED BY BOYS AND GIRLS. MERRILY SET OUT IN VERSE. These lines have been erroneously attributed by Baines, in his "History of Lancashire" (ii. 579), to the second Randle Holme, who merely quoted them as descriptive of Lancashire games and sports in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are from Samuel Rowland's "Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head-Vaine" (1600). Some of these names of games, and indeed the games themselves, having become obsolete, a few brief explanations may be necessary for the general reader:—Stool-ball is a pastime still practised in the North of England. It consists in simply setting a stool on the ground, and one of the players takes his place before it, while his ntagonist, standing at a distance, tosses a ball with the intention of striking the