and goaded people as a shaft of protecting or avenging Heaven. The fervices of fuch a chieftain, too, afforded a fure and tempting refuge for every Anglo-Saxon who, ftrong in heart and in muscle, and ftung by intolerable infult, had flown in the face of the Norman owner, or his owner's bailiff,- for every villein who, in defending the decencies of his hearth, might have brained fome brutal collector of the poll-tax,-for every rustic sportsman who had incurred death or mutilation, the ferocious penalty of the Anglo-Norman foreft laws, for "taking, killing, and eating deer." What wonder, then, that in the merrie days of England, men of all conditions,-the peasant in his cottage home,-the fober citizen in the bufy "chepe" of London,-the nobles, and even the monarch on his throne, fhould ftill preserve the memory of the good chivalrous bowman? Thus it was, as Stowe tells us, that "In the month of May, namely on May-day in the morning, every man, without impediment, would walk into the fweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and favour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praifing God in their kind; and for example hereof, Edward Hall hath noted, that King Henry VIII., as in the 3rd of his reign, and divers other years, fo namely in the 7th of his reign, on May-day in the morning, with Queen Katherine his wife, accompanied with many lords and ladies, rode a-Maying, from Greenwitch to the high ground of Shooter's Hill, where as they paffed by the way they efpied a company of tall yeomen, clothed all in green, with green hoods, and bows and arrows, to the

G

number of two hundred; one, being their chieftain, was called Robin Hoode, who required the king and his company to stay and fee his men fhoot; whereunto the king granting, Robin Hoode whistled, and all the two hundred archers fhot off, loofing all at once; and when he whiftled again they likewise shot again; their arrows whiftled by craft of the head fo that the noife was ftrange and loud, which greatly delighted the king, queen, and their company. Moreover this Robin Hoode defired the king, and queen, with their retinue, to enter the green wood, where, in arbours made of boughs, and decked with flowers, they were fet and ferved plentifully with venifon and wine by Robin Hoode and his men, to their great contentment, and had other pageants and pastimes."

PLAYS AND MYSTERIES.

ANY and various were the amusements of our forefathers. Evidence of the abundance of national sports

and paftime are to be met with in almost all old English writers; and in a work of fo unpromifing a title as the "Anatomy of Melancholy," by Burton, in the seventeenth century, we are told that " ringing, bowling, shooting, playing with keel-pins, coits, pitching of bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, muftering, fwimming, playing with wafters, foils, foot-balls, balowns, running at the quintain, and the like, are common recreations of country folks." To this long lift he adds, "Dancing, finging, masking, mumming, and ftage plays, are reasonable recreations if in season; as are Maygames, wakes, and Whitfun Ales, if not at unfeasonable hours;"