tition with him, exclaims, "Let the major play the hobby-horse among his brethren, and he will, I hope our towne-lads cannot want a hobbyhorse. 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 Every man out of his humour, Act ii. Sc. 1. 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, A maying, a playing; 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 Vincken boom, 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 end of it, and with this he is collecting money. The piper is pretty much in his original state; but the hobbyhorse 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 musick. With this man danced six others, carrying on their shoulders as many rein deer heads, with the arms |