Honey Fairs--Card-playing at Christmas--Throwing the Hood--Early Religious Plays--Moralities--Story of a Gray's Inn Play--The first Pantomime--Spectacular Drama--George Barnwell--Story respecting this Play. _Time's Telescope_ (1824, p. 297) notes that in Cumberland, and in all the great towns in the north of England, about a week before Christmas, what are called _Honey fairs_ were held, in which dancing forms the leading amusement. Card-playing, too, was justifiable at Christ-tide. An ordinance for governing the household of the Duke of Clarence in the reign of Edward IV. forbade all games at dice, cards, or other hazard for money "_except during the twelve days at Christmas_." And, again, in the reign of Henry VII. an Act was passed against unlawful games, which expressly forbids artificers, labourers, servants, or apprentices to play at any such, _except at Christmas_, and at some of the colleges cards are introduced in the Combination Rooms during the twelve days of Christmas, but never appear there during the remainder of the year. Cards are not much patronised by the present generation, yet dignity is occasionally sunk in a romping round game at Christ-tide. But it is a question as to who knows such games as My Lady Coventry, All Fours, Snip Snap Snorum, Old Maid, Commerce, Put, Pope Joan, Brag, Blind Hookey, Loo, etc., etc., without reference to a manual on the subject. Timbs[74] gives a very curious custom or game which, he says, is still observed on Old Christmas day in the village of Haxey, in Lincolnshire. It is traditionally said to have originated from a lady of the De Mowbrays, who, a few years after the Conquest, was riding through Craize Lound, an adjoining hamlet, when the wind blew her riding hood from her head, and so amused her, that she left twelve acres of land to twelve men who ran after the hood, and gave them the strange name of Boggoners; to them, however, the land, with the exception of about a quarter of an acre, has for centuries been lost. The Throwing of the Hood now consists of the villagers of West Woodside and Haxey trying who can get to the nearest public-house in each place, the Hood, which is made of straw covered with leather, about two feet long and nine inches round. The twelve Boggoners are pitched against the multitude, which has been known to exceed two thousand persons from all parts of the neighbourhood; and as soon as a Boggoner touches the hood or catches it the game is won. [Footnote 74: _Garland for the Year_, p. 151.]