Not only legends, but traditions, and some historical incidents, as those brought to light by the Forest Rolls, afford now and then an insight of the sporting kind of life led within the boundary and jurisdiction of the forest and upon its outskirts. The bow being not only the chief weapon of sport but of war, those with a greater revenue from land than one hundred pence were at one time not only permitted but compelled to have in their possession bows and arrows, but, to prevent those living within the precincts of the forest killing the king’s deer, the arrows were to be rounded. These were sometimes sharpened, and disputes arose between their owners, the dwellers in the villages, and the overseers of the forest, the more fruitful source of grievance being with the commoners, who, claiming pasturage for their cows and their horses, often became poachers. On one occasion a kid being wounded by an arrow at Atterley, on the Willey side of the Severn, and the culprit not being forthcoming, a whole district is in _misericordiâ_, under the ban of the fierce Forest Laws of the period. On another occasion a stag enters the postern gate of the Castle of Bridgnorth, and the vision of venison within reach proving too strong for the Castellan, he is entrapped, and litigation ensues. Sometimes the stout foresters and sturdy guardians of the castle, and burgesses of the town, indulge in friendly trials of skill at quarter-staff or archery, or in a wrestling match for a cross-bow, a ram, or a “red gold ring.” In Ritson’s “Robin Hood” we read:— “By a bridge was a wrastling, And there taryed was he: And there was all the best yemen Of all the west countrey. A full fayre game there was set up, A white bull up y-pight, A great courser with saddle and brydle With gold burnished full bryght; A payre of gloves, a red golde ringe, A pipe of wyne good fay: What man bereth him best I wis, The prize shall bear away.”