Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/185

 becomes in the provincialism of Lancashire the boggat. Mummers and maskers were finally suppressed by a statute of Henry VIII., which awarded against them an imprisonment of three months, and a fine at the discretion of the justices; so that in England the game of blindman's buff, and probably the modern entertainment of the masquerade, are the only relics of the Bock of Yule.

CLITHEROE SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

" wakes," says Mr Wright, "rush-bearings, and other rude customs of antiquity, continue to be observed in this locality; besides the practice of dressing up two figures as the king and queen, something in the Guy Fawkes costume, and carrying them round the borough boundaries. The very objectionable custom of lifting or heaving is not yet extinct at Clitheroe; and, reprehensible in all ages, it must be doubly so when simplicity characterises the religious observances of so many Christian sects." Another writer thus describes these practices in 1784:—

"Lifting was originally designed to represent our Saviour's resurrection. The men lift the women on Easter Monday, and the women the men on Tuesday. One or more take hold of each leg, and one or more of each arm, near the body, and lift the person up into a horizontal position three times. It is a rude, indecent, and dangerous diversion, practised chiefly by the lower class of people. Our magistrates constantly prohibit it by the bellman, but it subsists at the end of the town; and the women have of late years converted it into a money job. I believe it is chiefly confined to these northern counties."