Caraways and Apples.

Caraway-seeds, which are esteemed as carminative and stomachic, and are used in cakes and comfits, are thus mentioned by Shakspeare:

:

Nay, you shall see mine orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year's pippin of mine own grafting, with a dish of caraways, and so forth.-Henry IV., Part Second.

Apples and caraways were a favourite dish, and are said to be well served up on particular days at Trinity College, Cambridge. Old customs are longer retained in colleges than, perhaps, in any other places. In an old book, The Haven of Health, 1584, by Thomas Cogan, is a confirmation of the practice, telling us that caraway-seeds made into comfits, (i.e., covered with sugar,) are eaten with apples to counteract the wind produced by that fruit,-" surely a verie good way for students."

"Out of Debt, out of Danger."

Sir Egerton Brydges, in his Autobiography, makes this humiliating confession of the parlous state in which he became involved for want of ordinary care and foresight in looking into his affairs.

Out of debt, out of danger," is, like many other proverbs, full of wisdom; but the word danger does not sufficiently express all that the warning demands.

To one that is not callous, a state of debt and embarrassment is a state of positive misery: the sufferer is as one haunted by an evil spirit, and his heart can know neither rest nor peace till it is cast out. But an example is at all times more instructive than precept.

"Quiet [says Sir Egerton] was never my destiny. The first involvement multiplies at every move. It destroys the freedom of the intellect and the heart, and drives one into a state of mistiness, which seeks extrication by the very means which augment it. It encourages self-delusions for the sake of momentary peace; and, like inebriety, buys oblivion at the expense of quickly succeeding pain and sickness. The creditor, who thinks himself sure of his debt at last, delights in giving credit, because he has his debtor at his mercy, makes his own usurious terms with him, and gorges on his blood. He who lives on credit dares not examine bills; and the creditor charges according to the degree of his own wide conscience. Thus, there is a difference of at least cent. per cent. in every article the debtor consumes; and two thousand pounds a year with him, will not go so far as one in the hands of him who pays ready money, and looks to his accounts.

"Pecuniary embarrassment weakens and chains the mind; and, perhaps, the worst effect of all is, in the indignities to which it subjects its victim. There is no rule of life, therefore, more urgent than to avoid it; nor has a careless man the slightest suspicion of what may be the effect of overlooking a comparatively slight error.

"I lived at a vast expense, without the smallest management; my household was numerous, though not for show; my butcher's weekly bill amounted to a sum that would appear incredible; and my horses ate up the produce of all my meadow and oat-fields, though those I held in hand were numerous. In short, mine was a sort of Castle Rackrent,' in which all was disorder, and all was waste, while those that plundered me most, and lived on me most, abused me most; and I then spent more in a week than I now spend in three months. Confusion grew upon confusion, and every day it became a more tremendous task to look into things.

"My bitterest enemy cannot condemn the utter thoughtlessness of worldly affairs in which I then lived more than I do. It was a sort of infatuation, which, having once been plunged into, I had not the courage to extricate myself from. I knew not what my income was; but no doubt my expenditure exceeded it by many thousands; I kept very imperfect accounts, and every one cheated me."

In further illustration of this homely proverb, we may relate the following instance of a notorious spendthrift:

General Sir John Irwin was a celebrity of the latter half of the last century. Besides a regiment and a government conferred on him by the Crown, he held for several years the post of Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, with very ample appointments and advantages. But no income, however large, could suffice for his expenses. At one of the entertainments which he gave to the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin, he displayed on the table, as the principal piece in the dessert, a representation of the fortress of Gibraltar, invested by the Spanish forces, executed in confectionery. It exhibited a faithful view of that celebrated rock; with the works, batteries, and artillery of the besiegers, which threw sugar-plums against the walls. The expense of this ostentatious piece of magnificence did not fall short of fifteen hundred pounds. Sir John Irwin was a great favourite with George III., who once observed to him, "They tell me, Sir John, that you love a glass of wine." Those," replied Irwin, "who so informed your Majesty have done me great injustice: they should have said a bottle." His extravagant mode of living involved him in great pecuniary difficulties; and while abroad, and in great distress, George III., on two different occasions, sent him a present of five hundred pounds. His debts became so numerous, and his creditors so importunate, that he privately quitted his elegant house in Piccadilly, opposite the Green Park, and retired to the Continent. There he hired a château in Normandy, but his pecuniary difficulties continuing, he removed over the Alps into Italy; he is said to have died at Padua, in May, 1788, in obscurity, but not in distress.

The Game of Merells, or Morris.

This is played by two persons on a board, whereon are marked three squares, one within another, at a great distance, and connected with

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each other by a line at each angle, drawn from the inner to the outer square, and again by lines in the middle of each side of the square, the area of which is denominated "the pound." At each intersection of the lines, a spot or hole is made; and it is sometimes played with pegs, sometimes with bits of paper, or wood, or stone. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, gives a representation of a Merells table of the fourteenth century, which coincides with the above description. Cotgrave gives-"Le Jeu des Merelles, the boyish game called Merilla, or fivepennie Morris, played here most commonly with stones, but in France with pawns, or men made of purpose, and termed Merelles."

This was formerly the pastime of the shepherds while tending their flocks in the open fields, and was called Nine Men's Merrils, or Nine Men's Morris. The squares were rudely cut on the turf with their knives, in a somewhat similar form to those marked on the board; and the game was played with stones or pegs. After a continuance of rainy weather, these squares were filled up with mud, which verifies the allusion made by Shakspeare in the following passage, about which so much has been said by the commentators :—

The ninemen's morris filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

Or at th' unhappy wags, which let their cattel stray,
At nine holes on the heath whilst they together play.

Drayton's Polyolbion.

The game also bears the name of Peg Morris, as is evidenced by Clare, speaking of the Shepherd Boy :

Oft may we track his haunts, where he hath been

To spend the leisure which his toils bestow,

By nine-peg morris nicked upon the green.

Upon the enclosure of open fields, this game was transferred to a board, and it continues a fireside recreation of the agricultural labourer. It is often called by the name of Mill, or Shepherd's Mill.

Ridings.

These are public demonstrations in ridicule and reprehension of a wife who tyrannizes over her husband; or of a couple between whom there is, unfortunately, too much cause for jealousy. Two men, one of them in female attire, with a long basting-ladle in his hand, are drawn about in a cart, sometimes by boys, sometimes by a horse. At intervals they stop before the houses where the exhibition will be most annoying, and there, while the female belabours the man with the ladle, a conversation is carried on between them in imitation of the language used by the offending parties. This public expression of reproof (says Miss Baker) has been witnessed in Northampton within the memory of the present generation, and is still continued in many villages.

Riding the Skimmington is another name in some parts of the kingdom, for an exhibition of this nature. Strype, in his edition of Stow's Survey, records one as occurring at Charing Cross on Shrove Tuesday. It is described with wonderful humour in Butler's Hudibras (Part ii.). Dr. Nash, in one of his notes to the passage, says the Skimmington, or procession to exhibit a woman who had beaten her husband, is humorously compared to á Roman triumph. The accompaniments, which Butler thus describes, have been more familiarly known as "rough music :"

They might distinguish different noise

Of horns, and pans, and dogs, and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub.

The Skimmington is also noticed by Sir Walter Scott, in the Fortunes of Nigel. The custom is well known in Dorsetshire; and we have occasionally witnessed it at Dorking, in Surrey.

Skimmington is evidently an imitation of Riding the Stang, which Jamieson considers the remains of a very ancient observance among the Goths. In Westmoreland, it is enacted by a man borne upon a pole through the streets, when he proclaims the husband's ill-treatment through the town; and we read of a similar custom at Biggar, in Lanarkshire, and in Edinburgh.

Statute Fairs,

Called in Northamptonshire "Stattee, or Stattis," were first established by Act of Parliament in Edward III., 1351, and were held in every hundred of every shire in England, and attended by sheriffs, magistrates, &c. for the purpose of regulating servants' wages, and fixing such of them in service as refused to seek, or were unable to obtain masters. The statute for the Hundred of Spelho, in which Northampton is situated (Miss Baker tells us), was formerly held at Kingsthorp, but is now removed to Weston Favell. The interference of magistrates has ceased long ago, and it is now merely an annual assemblage held at particular villages and places before Michaelmas, for the purpose of hiring husbandry and household servants. If held after Michaelmas, it is termed a Mop. The emblems of service are placed in the hats of the men servants: the ploughboy or carter has a piece of whipcord; the shepherd a lock of wool; and the milk-boy a tuft of cow-hair. Both young men and maidens appear in their best attire, for these meetings are looked forward to with much interest, as furnishing an occasion for a holiday.

He knew the manners, too, of merry rout;
Statute and feast his village yearly knew;
And glorious revels, too, without a doubt,

Such pastimes were to Bob, and Nell, and Sue,
Milk-maids and clowns that statute joys pursue.

Clare's Village Minstrel.

We remember the Statute Fair at Hemel Hempstead as of great extent, some fifty years since. It was held in the hilly street of the town, the best stalls, especially those for fancy articles, being in the Marketplace the shows, which were numerous and extensive, were erected in the Fair Field." We date two inferences from this Statute Fair: 1. That the profanely inscribing of garters with passages from Scripture, is a relic of the loose age of Charles II.; 2. That Horace Walpole's experience of the deceit of shows at fairs is correct, when he says, in one of his letters, "I am not commonly fond of sights, but content myself with the oil-cloth picture of them that is hung out, and to which they seldom come up."

Cricket.

The game of Cricket, which is peculiar to our island, has been derived from the Saxon Cricee or Creag, a crook'd stick or club. Like other British sports, it has undergone considerable modifications, more particularly in the last fifty years; hence the difficulty of determining the precise date of its origin. Doubtless, cricket was played in some rude form as early as any game of ball, or even before balls were made, with cats or bits of stick. If so early played with a ball, it may have been named club and ball; and as such, it is an old game. The old copper-plate etching of the Coteswold games gives all the games of the times, but nothing like this. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, could discover no earlier notice of it than that by D'Urfey, in his CambroBritish doggerel [1710]:

Hur was the prettiest fellow

At foot-ball or at cricket,

At hunting-chase, or prison-base,

Cot's plest, how hur could nick it.

Milton's nephew, however, Edward Phillips, directly refers to the cricket-ball in his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, 1685, which is, probably, the first mention of the word in its English modern form, by any author in present use. Strange to say, the game is omitted (as known at least by its present name) in the Schedule of Sports drawn up by command of James I.; and in the recapitulation of popular amusements in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are mute on it; but in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1788, a Correspondent writes that in the Wardrobe Account of the 28th Edw. I. (1300), among the entries of money issued for the use of his son Prince Edward in playing at different games, is "creag' et alios ludos," &c. And the same writer adds, in a note, "Mr. Barrington has suggested that Cricket is alluded to under two Latin words, denoting the ball-and-bat sport, in a proclamation of Edward III. (1363); as also in a statute 17 Edw. IV. (1477), by the pastime of handyn and

handout."

Cricket was played at Finsbury, in the Royal Artillery Ground, before