families, they were distinguished by a calf-skin coat, which had the buttons down the back; and this they wore that they might be known for fools, and escape the resentment of those whom they provoked with their waggeries.

"The custom is still preserved in Ireland; and the Fool in any of the legends which the mummers act at Christmass always appears in a calf's or cow's skin."

"The properties belonging to this strange personage," says Strutt, "in the early times, are little known at present. They were such, however, as recommended him to the notice of his superiors, and rendered his presence a sort of requisite in the houses of the opulent.” According to "the Illuminators of the thirteenth century, he bears the squalid appearance of a wretched ideot, wrapped in a blanket which scarcely covers his nakedness, holding in one hand a stick, with an inflated bladder attached to it by a cord, which answered the purpose of a bauble. If we view him in his more improved state, where his clothing is something better, yet his tricks* are so exceedingly barbarous and vulgar, that they would disgrace the most despicable Jack-Pudding that ever exhibited at Bartholomew fair and even when he was more perfectly equipped in his party-coloured coat and hood, and completely decorated with bells,+ his improvements are of such a nature as seem to add but little to his respectability, much less qualify him as a companion for kings and noblemen.

"In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Fool, or more properly the Jester, was a man of some ability; and, if his character has been strictly drawn by Shakespeare and other dramatic writers, the entertainment he afforded consisted in witty retorts and sarcastical reflections; and his licence seems, upon such occasions, to have been very extensive. Sometimes, however, these gentlemen overpassed the appointed limits, and they were therefore corrected or discharged. The latter misfortune happened to Archibald Armstrong, Jester to King Charles I. The wag happened to pass a severe jest upon Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, which so highly offended the supercilious prelate that he procured an order from the King in Council for his discharge."

The order for Archy's discharge was as follows: "It is, this day (March 11, A.D. 1637), ordered by his Majesty, with the advice of the Board, that Archibald Armstrong, the King's Fool, for certain scandalous words of a high nature, spoken by him against the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury his Grace, and proved to be uttered by him by

"In one instance he is biting the tail of a dog, and seems to place his fingers upon his body, as if he were stopping the holes of a flute, and probably moved them as the animal altered its cry. The other is riding on a stick with a bell, having a blown bladder attached to it."

+"This figure," referred to by Strutt, "has a stick surmounted with a bladder, if I mistake not, which is in lieu of a bauble, which we frequently see representing a fool's head, with hood and bells, and a cock's comb upon the hood, very handsomely carved. William Summers, Jester to Henry VIII., was habited in a motley jerkin, with motley hosen,' as we read in the History of Jack of Newbury."

two witnesses, shall have his coat pulled over his head, and be discharged the King's service, and banished the court; for which the Lord Chamberlain of the King's household is prayed and required to give order to be executed." And the order was immediately put in execution.

Rushworth says: "It so happened that, on the 11th of the said March, Archibald, the King's Fool, said to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he was going to the Council-table, 'Whea's feule now? doth not your Grace hear the news from Striveling about the Liturgy?' with other words of reflection. This was presently complained of to the Council, which produced the ensuing order." On another occasion he is reported to have said: "Great Praise be given to God, and little Laud to the devil."

Bedlamer was a name for a fool. He used to carry a horn. Did the expression "horn-mad" originate thence?

SCARLET, STOKESLEY, AND LITTLE JOHN.

These appear to have been Robin Hood's companions from the following old ballad—

"I have heard talk of Robin Hood

Derry, Derry, Derry down,

And of brave Little John,

Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,
Stokesley and Maid Marrian,

Hey down," &c.

Among the extracts given by Lysons from the Churchwardens' and Chamberlains' Accounts of Kingston-upon-Thames, an entry has been already quoted "for Little John's cote."

Little John, writes Douce," is first mentioned, together with Robin Hood, by Fordun the Scottish historian, who wrote in the fourteenth century, and who speaks of the celebration of the story of these persons in the theatrical performances of his time, and of the minstrels' songs relating to them, which he says the common people preferred to all other romances.”

TOM THE PIPER WITH TABOR AND PIPE.

Among the extracts already quoted from Lysons's Environs of London, there is one entry which shows that the piper was sent (probably to make collections) round the country.

Tollet, in the Description of his Window, says, to prove No. 9 to be Tom the Piper, Steevens has very happily quoted these lines from Drayton's third Eclogue:

"Myself above Tom Piper to advance,

Who so bestirs him in the Morris Dance
For penny wage."

His tabor, tabor-stick, and pipe, attest his profession; the feather in his cap, his sword, and silver-tinctured shield,* may denote

Douce remarks: "What Tollett has termed his silver shield seems a mistake for the lower part, or flap, of his stomacher."

him to be a squire minstrel, or a minstrel of the superior order. A note in Urry's Chaucer (1721) says: "Minstrels used a red hat." Tom Piper's bonnet is red, faced or turned up with yellow, his doublet blue, the sleeves blue, turned up with yellow, and something like red muffettees at his wrists. Over his doublet is a red garment, like a short cloak with arm-holes, with a yellow cape, his hose red, and garnished across and perpendicularly on the thighs with a narrow yellow lace; and his shoes are brown.

THE HOBBY HORSE.

Tollet, in his Description of the Morris dancers in his Window, is induced to think the famous hobby horse to be the King of the May, though he now appear as a juggler and a buffoon, from the crimson foot-cloth * fretted with gold, the golden bit, the purple bridle, with a golden tassel and studded with gold, the man's purple mantle with a golden border, which is latticed with purple, his golden crown, and purple cap, with a red feather and with a golden knop.

"Our Hobby," he adds, " is a spirited horse of paste-board, in which the master dances and displays tricks of legerdemain, such as the threading of the needle, the mimicking of the whigh-hie, and the daggers in the nose, &c., as Ben Jonson acquaints us, and thereby explains the swords in the man's cheeks. What is stuck in the horse's mouth I apprehend to be a ladle, ornamented with a ribbon. Its use was to receive the spectators' pecuniary donations." "The colour of the Hobby Horse is a reddish white, like the beautiful blossom of the peach-tree. The man's coat, or doublet, is the only one upon the window that has buttons upon it, and the right side of it is yellow, and the left red."

In Sampson's The Vow-Breaker, or the Fayre Maid of Clifton (1636), is the following dialogue between Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, and Ball, which throws great light upon this now obsolete character:

"Ball. But who shall play the Hobby Horse? Master Major? "Miles. I hope I looke as like a Hobby Horse as Master Major. I have not liv'd to these yeares, but a man woo'd thinke I should be old enough and wise enough to play the Hobby Horse as well as ever a Major on 'em all. Let the Major play the Hobby Horse among his brethren, and he will; I hope our towne ladds cannot want a Hobby Horse. Have I practic'd my reines, my carree'res, my pranckers, my ambles, my false trotts, my smooth ambles, and Canterbury paces, and shall Master Major put me besides the Hobby Horse? Have I borrow'd the fore horse-bells, his plumes, and braveries, nay, had his mane new shorne and frizl'd, and shall the Major put me besides the Hobby Horse? Let him hobby-horse at home, and he will. Am I not going to buy ribbons and toyes of sweet Ursula for the Marian, and shall I not play the Hobby Horse?

*The foot-cloth, however, was used by the fool. Strappado for the Divell we read:

"Erect our aged Fortunes make them shine
(Not like the Foole in's foot-cloath but) like Time
Adorn'd with true Experiments," &c.

In Brathwaite's

"Ball. What shall Joshua doe?

"Miles. Not know of it, by any meanes; hee'l keepe more stir with the Hobby Horse then he did with the Pipers at Tedbury Bull-running : provide thou for the Dragon, and leave me for a Hobby-Horse.

"Ball. Feare not, I'le be a fiery Dragon." And afterwards, when Boote askes him :

"Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, gentleman and souldier, what make you here?

"Miles. Alas, Sir, to borrow a few ribbandes, bracelets, eare-rings, wyer-tyers, and silke girdles and hand-kerchers for a Morice, and a show before the Queene.

"Boote. Miles, you came to steale my Neece.

"Miles. Oh Lord! Sir, I came to furnish the Hobby Horse.

"Boote. Get into your Hobby Horse, gallop, and be gon then, or I'le Moris dance you-Mistris, waite you on me. Exit.

“ Ursula. Farewell, good Hobby Horse.-Weehee." Exit. Douce informs us that the earliest vestige now remaining of the hobby horse is in the painted window at Betley, already described. "The allusions to the omission of the hobby horse are frequent in the old plays, and the line,

'For O, for O, the Hobby Horse is forgot,'

is termed by Hamlet an epitaph, which Theobald supposed, with great probability, to have been satirical." A scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleased, act iv., best shows the sentiments of the Puritans on this occasion.

66

Whoever," says Douce, "happens to recollect the manner in which Mr Bayes's troops, in The Rehearsal, are exhibited on the stage, will have a tolerably correct notion of a Morris Hobby Horse. Additional remains of the Pyrrhic, or sword-dance, are preserved in the daggers stuck in the man's cheeks, which constituted one of the hocus-pocus or legerdemain tricks practised by this character, among which were the threading of a needle, and the transferring of an egg from one hand to the other, called by Ben Jonson the travels of the egg.* To the horse's mouth was suspended a ladle, for the purpose of gathering money from the spectators. In later times the fool appears to have formed this office, as may be collected from Nashe's play of Summer's Last Will and Testament, where this stage-direction occurs : 'Ver goes in and fetcheth out the Hobby-horse and the Morrice Daunce, who daunce about.' Ver then says: About, about, lively, put your horse to it, reyne him harder, jerke him with your wand, sit fast, sit fast, man; Foole, hold up your ladle there. Will Summers is made to say, 'You friend with the Hobby Horse, goe not too fast, for fear of wearing out my lord's tyle-stones with your hob-nayles.' Afterwards there enter three clowns and three maids, who dance the Morris, and at the same time sing the following song :

From the towne, to the grove,
Two and two, let us rove,
A Maying, a playing;
Love hath no gainsaying;
So merrily trip and goe.

Walpole, in his Catalogue of English Engravers, under the name of Peter Stent, has described two paintings at Lord Fitzwilliam's on Richmond Green, which came out of the old neighbouring palace. They were executed by Vinckenboom about the end of the reign of James I., and exhibit views of the above palace. In one of these pictures a Morris dance is introduced, consisting of seven figures, viz. a fool, a hobby horse, a piper, a Maid Marian, and three other dancers, the rest of the figures being spectators. Of these, the first four and one of the dancers Douce has reduced in a plate from a tracing made by Grose. The fool has an inflated bladder or eel-skin, with a ladle at the end of it, and with this he is collecting money. The piper is pretty much in his original state; but the hobby horse wants the legerdemain apparatus, and Maid Marian is not remarkable for the elegance of her person.

A short time before the Revolution in France, according to Douce, the May games and Morris dance were celebrated in many parts of that country, accompanied by a fool and a hobby horse. The latter was termed un chevalet; and, if the authority of Minshew be not questionable, the Spaniards had the same character under the name of tarasca.

UNI

ST URBAN'S DAY.

25th May.

'NDER St Paul's day, we have shown that it is customary in many parts of Germany to drag the image of St Urban to the river, if on the day of his feast it happens to be foul weather.

Aubanus tells us that "Upon St Urban's Day all the vintners and masters of vineyards set a table either in the market-steed, or in some other open and public place, and covering it with fine napery, and strawing upon it greene leaves and sweete flowers, do place upon the table the image of that holy bishop, and then if the day be cleare and faire, they crown the image with greate store of wine; but if the weather prove rugged and rainie, they cast filth, mire, and puddle water upon it; persuading themselves that, if the day be faire and calme, their grapes, which then begin to flourish, will prove good that year; but if it be stormie and tempestuous, they shall have a bad vintage."

The same anecdote is related in the Popish Kingdome of Naogeorgus.