is to be found in the early annals of the game. Besides the game in a field of play, there was also, we learn from Carew, a game played over country. “Two three or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes.” In this game the goals were usually houses, or else villages, three or four miles asunder, and “that company which can catch or carry it by force or slight to the place assigned, gaineth the victory. Such as see where the ball is played give notice, by crying, ‘Ware east,’ ‘Ware west,’ as the same is carried. The hurlers take their way over hilles, dales, hedges, ditches, yea, and thorow bushes, briars, mires, plashes and rivers whatsoever, so as you shall sometimes see twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the water, scrambling and scratching for the ball.” This description of what may be described as a “maul in pond” is certainly interesting, and the whole description of the game lucid. The criticism of the game is also eminently sensible. “The play is verily both rude and rough, yet such as is not destitute of policies in some sort resembling the feats of war; for you shall have companies laid out before, on the one side to encounter them that come with the ball, and of the other party to succour them in manner of a fore-ward.” (Thus we see that the term “forward” in football is no ill-chosen one, the “fore-wards” or “fore-guards” being those who bear the first attack, and protect the rear-guards, who are manœuvring behind.) Carew goes on, “The ball in this play may be compared to an infernal spirit, for whosoever catcheth it fareth straightways like a madman struggling and fighting with those that go about to hold him: no sooner is the ball gone from him than he resigneth this fury to the next receiver, and himself becometh peaceable as before.” (Perhaps, we may here remark, the man who lost the ball became peaceable because he was by that time well “blown.” We have observed the same ourselves in the present age.) Carew ends up with some very thoughtful criticism of the game, “I cannot well resolve,” he says, “whether I should the more commend this game for its manhood and exercise, or condemn it for the boisterousness and harm which it begetteth; for as on the one side it makes their bodies strong, hard, and nimble, and puts a courage into their hearts to meet an enemy in the face, so on the other part it is accompanied by many dangers, some of which do ever fall to the players’ share, for the proof whereof when the hurling is ended, you shall see them retiring home as from a pitched battle, with bloody pates, bones broken and out of joint, and such bruises as serve to shorten their days; yet all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.”