And I know 'tis unfit all these good fellows
Should wait the cooling of your zealous porridge;
Chuse whether you will dance, or have me execute;
I'll clap your neck i'th' stocks, and there I'll make ye
Dance a whole day, and dance with these at night too.
You mend old shoes well, mend your old manners better,
And suddenly see you leave off this sincereness,
This new hot batch, borrowed from some brown baker,
Some learned brother, or I'll so bait ye for 't,

And thus I am forc'd a by-word to my brethren.

The Hobby-horse was represented by a man equipped with as much pasteboard as was sufficient to form the head and hinder parts of a horse, the quadrupedal defects being concealed by a long mantle or footcloth that nearly touched the ground. The performer on this occasion exerted all his skill in burlesque horsemanship. In Sampson's play of The vowbreaker, 1636, a miller personates the hobby-horse; and being angry that the mayor of the city is put in competition with him, exclaims, "Let the major play the hobby-horse among his brethren, and he will, I hope our towne-lads cannot want a hobby-horse. Have I practic'd my reines, my careeres, 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 borrowed the forehorse bells, his plumes and braveries, nay had his mane new shorne and frizl'd, and shall the major put me besides the hobby-horse?" Whoever 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 performed 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 morris 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, holde up your ladle there." Will Summers is made to say, "You friend with the hobby-horse, goe not too fast, for feare 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:

"Trip and goe, heave and hoe,

Up and downe, to and fro,
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."

Lord Orford in his catalogue of English engravers, under the article 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 are reduced in the annexed plate from a tracing made by the late Captain Grose. The fool has an inflated bladder or eel-skin with a ladle at the

* Every man out of his humour, Act II. Scene 1.

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.

Dr. Plott, in his History of Staffordshire, p. 434, mentions that within memory, at Abbot's or Paget's Bromley, they had a sort of sport which they celebrated at Christmas, or on new year and twelfth days, called the Hobby-horse dance, from a person who carried the image of a horse between his legs made of thin boards, and in his hand a bow and arrow. The latter passing through a hole in the bow, and stopping on a shoulder, made a snapping noise when drawn to and fro, keeping time with the music. With this man danced six others, carrying on their shoulders as many rein-deer heads, with the arms of the chief families to whom the revenues of the town belonged. They danced the heys and other country dances. To the above hobby-horse dance there belonged a pot, which was kept by turns by the reeves of the town, who provided cakes and ale to put into this pot; all people who had any kindness for the good intent of the institution of the sport giving pence a-piece for themselves and families. Foreigners also that came to see it contributed; and the money, after defraying the expense of the cakes and ale, went to repair the church and support the poor; which charges, adds the doctor, are not now perhaps so cheerfully borne.

A short time before the revolution in France, 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 Minsheu be not questionable, the Spaniards had the same character under the name of tarasca.*

VIII. THE Dragon. The earliest mention of him as a part of the morris dance we have already seen in the extract

Spanish dictionary.