Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/183

 ; and two piles, with four crosses, for farthings." This at least shows that "cross and pile" were terms for the opposite sides of coins. The next sport is apparently a foot-race to the next stile. Leaping over a Christmas bonfire appears to be a relic of the leaping through or over the bel-tain fires in honour of Bel or Baal, at various festivals. The name of the next game contains a misprint. It should be drawing dun out of the mire. Dun was a favourite name for horse or mare of that colour, to which the saying "Dun is the mouse" doubtless refers. "Dule upo' Dun," a Lancashire tradition, is anglice the devil upon the dun horse or mare. The rural game is described as played with a log of wood representing dun (the cart-horse), and a cry is raised that he is stuck in the mire. Two of the company advance either with or without ropes, to draw him out. They find themselves unable, call for help, and gradually the whole company take part, when dun is extricated of course; the fun consisting in the awkward and affected efforts of the rustics to lift the log, and sundry arch contrivances to let the ends of it fall on one another's toes. Chaucer and Ben Johnson have references to it. Shoot-cock is the same with our shuttlecock; was played by boys in the fourteenth century, and was a fashionable pastime among grown persons in the reign of James I. Gregory was a children's game of the sixteenth century. Stool-ball has been already noticed. Perhaps this second time it occurs in the verses it should be read stow-ball, which appears to have been a species of golf, and played with a golf-ball. Pick-point occurs in an enumeration of children's games in the sixteenth century. Top and scourge is simply the whipping-top, one of the most ancient of boys' pastimes, for it was in vogue amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans. Peg-top is a modern play.