Perhaps we cannot do better than conclude our account of the football of the past before the days of the Rugby Union and Association rules by referring to the ancient game which is still played at Derby on Shrove Tuesday at the present, though perhaps played with less zest since the lusty youths of the city have had plenty of opportunities of enjoying the game to the top of their bent on other occasions, and since too we live in an age which has more respect for the privileges and feelings of peaceable householders than its predecessors. At Derby there has been from time immemorial a match at football on Shrove Tuesday, between the rival parishes of All Saints and St. Peter. The game is started in the market-place, and the St. Peter’s goal is a gate some miles away, while the wheel of a water-mill, distant about as far, is the goal of the All Saints’ division; and the game is over when the ball has been taken to either goal. Rules of the game there are none; and all that is needed is for one party, by force or by stratagem, to get the ball up to the adversary’s goal; to effect which object, _détours_ are made round streets and alleys, and the river often crossed by swimming with the ball. Here indeed is a survival of one of the ancient sports of merrie England, where blows are given and taken in good humour, and “all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.” Nor is Derby by any means the only place where such a game is still played. In the Midlands, the North, the South, and the West it survives in holes and corners of old England; and although we who have learnt the game of football in other days may prefer a good match with picked sides on the regulation field of play and under organized rules, yet we should regard with veneration the more simple sport from which has been derived the more elaborate game which it was our delight to play in youth, and which it may be our delight to watch in old age. We must reserve for another chapter the important task of showing how, issuing from its home in the public schools, where it had for generations found a welcome shelter, the game of football has developed once more in our days into a national sport. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. _History of Football in the Public Schools._