the commonalty, were sternly prohibited. The heart sickens at the cant and cruelty of these monstrous times, when fanaticism, with a dagger in one hand, and “Hooks and Eyes for an Unbeliever's Breeches,” in the other, revelled in the destruction of all that was intellectual in the land.
* Plays were suppressed by the Puritans in 1633. The actors
were driven off the stage by the soldiers; and the only
pleasantry that Messrs. “Praise-God-Barebones” and “Fight-
the-good-fight,” indulged in, was “Enter red coat, exit hat
and cloak;” a cant phrase in reference to this devout
tyranny. Randolph, in “The Muses' Looking-glass,” makes a
fanatic utter this charitable prayer:
“That the Globe,
Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,
Had been consum'd, the Phoenix burnt to ashes;
The Fortune whipp'd for a blind—Blackfriars!
He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' the time of
Reformation: lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the
Thames to the Bear Gardens, And there be soundly baited.
In 1599 was published “The overthrow of Stage Playes, by way
of controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainolde, where-
in all the Reasons that ean be made for them are notably
refuted, the objections answered, and the case so clear and
resolved as that the judgment of any man that is not froward
and perverse may casilic be satisfied; wherein is
manifestly proved that it is not onely unlawfull to bee an
actor, but a beholder of those vanities, &e. &c.”
When the lute, the virginals, the viol-de-gambo, were hushed for the inharmonious bray of their miserable conventicles, * and the quaintly appropriate signs ** of the ancient taverns and music shops were pulled down to make room for some such horrible effigy as we see dedicated to their high priest, John Knox, on a wall in the odoriferous Canongate of Modern Athens. ***
* “What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of
worship; dirty, narrow and squalid: stuck in the corner of
an old Popish garden such as Linlithgow, and much more,
Melrose.”—Robert Burns.
** Two wooden heads, with this inscription under it: “We
three loggerheads be.” The third was the spectator. The
tabor was the ancient sign of a music shop. Tarleton kept an
eating-house with this sign. Apropos of signs—Two Irishmen
beholding a hatchment fixed against a house, the one
inquired what it was? “It's a bad sign!” replied the other
mysteriously. Paddy being still at fault as to the meaning,
asked for further explanation.—“It's a sign,” cried his
companion with a look of immeasurable superiority, “that
somebody is dead!”
*** Those who would be convinced of the profaneness of the
Cameronians and Covenanters have only to read “Scotch
Presbyterian Eloquence displayed, or the Folly of their
teaching discovered from their Books, Sermons, and Prayers,”
1738—a volume full of ludicrous impieties. We select one
specimen.
Mr. William Vetch, preaching at Linton, in Tiviotdale, said,
“Our Bishops thought they were very secure this long time.
“Like Willie Willie Wastel,
I am in my castel.
All the dogs in the town
Dare nor ding me down.
“Yea, but there is a doggie in Heaven that has dung them all
down.”
Deep was the gloom of those dismal days! The kitchens were cool; the spits motionless. * The green holly and the mystic mistletoe ** were blooming abominations. The once rosy cheeks of John Bull looked as lean as a Shrove-Tuesday pancake, and every rib like the tooth of a saw.
* “The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster, and
Ruleroast the Cook,” 4to. 1641.
* The magical properties of the mistletoe are mentioned both
by Virgil and Ovid; and Apuleius has preserved some verses
of the poet Lelius, in which he mentions the mistletoe as
one of the things necessary to make a magician. In the dark
ages a similar belief prevailed, and even to the present day
the peasants of Holstein, and some other countries, call the
mistletoe the “Spectre's Wand,” from a supposition that
holding a branch of mistletoe in the hand will not only
enable a man to see ghosts, but to force them to speak to
him! The mistletoe is peculiar to Christmas.
Rampant were those times, when crop-ear'd Jack Presbyter was as blythe as shepherd at a wake. * Down tumbled the Maypoles **—no more music
* “We'll break the windows which the whore Of Babylon hath
planted,
And when the Popish saints are down,
Then Burges shall be sainted;
We'll burn the fathers' learned books,
And make the schoolmen flee;
We'll down with all that smells of wit,
And hey, then, up go we!”
** The downfall of May-games, 4to. 1660. By Thomas Hall, the
canting parson of King's-Norton.—Hear the caitiff,
“There's not a knave in all the town,
Nor swearing courtier, nor base clown,
Nor dancing lob, nor mincing quean,
Nor popish clerk, be't priest or dean,
Nor Knight debauch'd nor gentleman,
That follows drab, or cup, or can,
That will give thee a friendly look,
If thou a May-pole canst not brook.”
On May 1, 1517, the unfortunate shaft, or May-pole, gave
rise to the insurrection of that turbulent body, the London
apprentices, and the plundering of the foreigners in the
city, whence it got the name of Evil May-day. From that time
the offending pole was hung on a range of hooks over the
doors of a long row of neighbouring houses. In the 3rd of
Edward VI. an over-zealous fanatic called Sir Stephen began
to preach against this May-pole, which inflamed his audience
so greatly, that the owner of every house over which it hung
sawed off as much as depended over his premises, and
committed piecemeal to the flames this terrible