in annual faction-fights elsewhere[493]. It is probably due to that συνοικισμός of village communities by which towns often came into being. Here and there, moreover, there are to be found rude forms of football in which the primitive character of the proceeding is far more evident than in the sophisticated game. Two of these deserve especial mention. At Hallaton in Leicestershire a feast is held on Easter Monday at a piece of high ground called Hare-pie Bank. A hare--the sacrificial character of the hare has already been dwelt upon--is carried in procession. ‘Hare-pies’ are scrambled for; and then follows a sport known as ‘bottle-kicking.’ Hooped wooden field-bottles are thrown down and a scrimmage ensues between the men of Hallaton and the men of the adjoining village of Medbourne. Besides the connexion with the hare sacrifice, it is noticeable that each party tries to drive the bottle towards its own boundary, and not that of its opponents[494]. More interesting still is the Epiphany struggle for the ‘Haxey hood’ at Haxey in Lincolnshire. The ‘hood’ is a roll of sacking or leather, and it is the object of each of the players to carry it to a public-house in his own village. The ceremony is connected with the Plough Monday _quête_, and the ‘plough-bullocks’ or ‘boggons’ led by their ‘lord duke’ and their ‘fool,’ known as ‘Billy Buck,’ are the presiding officials. On the following day a festival-fire is lit, over which the fool is ‘smoked.’ The strongest support is given to my theory of the origin of this type of game, by an extraordinary speech which the fool delivers from the steps of an old cross. As usual, the cross has taken the place of a more primitive tree or shrine. The speech runs as follows: ‘Now, good folks, this is Haxa’ Hood. We’ve killed two bullocks and a half, _but the other half we had to leave running field_: we can fetch it if it’s wanted. Remember it’s ‘Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon, And if you meet a man, knock him doon.’ In this case then, the popular memory has actually preserved the tradition that the ‘hood’ or ball played with is the half of a bullock, the head that is to say, of the victim decapitated at a sacrifice[495]. Hockey and football and tug-of-war are lusty male sports, but the sacrificial survival recurs in some of the singing games played by girls and children. The most interesting of these is that known as ‘Oranges and Lemons.’ An arch is formed by two children with raised hands, and under this the rest of the players pass. Meanwhile rhymes are sung naming the bells of various parishes, and ending with some such formula as ‘Here comes a chopper to chop off your head: The last, last, last, last man’s head.’