Not the least curious part of this picture is the town in the background, with its entrance gateway, and public buildings. The Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen were imperfectly acquainted with perspective, and paid little attention to proportion in their representations of towns and houses, a circumstance which is fully illustrated in this picture. As the artist was unable from this circumstance to represent the buildings and streets of a town in their relative position, he put in a house to represent a multitude of houses, and here he has similarly given one building within the walls to represent all the public buildings of the town. An exactly similar characteristic will be observed in our cut No. 42, taken from the same manuscript, where one temple represents the town. Here again we have a party of citizens outside the walls, amusing themselves as well as they can; some, for want of other employment, are laying themselves down listlessly on the ground. [Illustration: _No. 42. A Town._] The national sentiments and customs of the Anglo-Saxons would, however, lead to the selection of other places for the scenes of their games, and thus the Roman amphitheatres became neglected. Each village had its arena--its play-place--where persons of all ages and sexes assembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been usually chosen near a fountain, or some object hallowed by the popular creed, for customs of this kind were generally associated with religious feelings which tended to consecrate and protect them. These holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minstrels, like those represented in our cut No. 41, repaired to them to exhibit their skill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themselves in running, or leaping, or wrestling. These games attracted merchants, and gradually became the centres of extensive fairs. Such was the case with one of the most celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled there, and, “after the manners of the English, practised wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded one another with songs and musical instruments; whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and buyers to assemble there on the same day for the purpose of commerce.”[15] This is a curious and a rather rare allusion to an Anglo-Saxon wake.