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RECREATIONS 625
festivals. Thus the children's game of 'Gathering Nuts in May*
may be a reminiscence ofmarriage by capture, the 'nuts' being
1
more probably 'knots* or
'posies';
the chopping/off/the^head
action in 'Oranges and Lemons* may represent
the selection of
the victim for human sacrifice. Or again football may have
originated in a fertility cult, in a scramble, a scrimmage, for the
possession ofthe head, the most prized portion ofthe sacrificial
beast. Such games formed part of the celebrations at village
festivals on May Day, Midsummer Day, and other feasts
which survived from pre-Christian
times. However that may
be, games ofball are certainly ofgreat antiquity. Nennius, who
compiled his Historia Brittonum in the ninth century, speaks of
boys playing pike ludum (ch. 43). We have seen that ball'
games were played by
the London citizens in the twelfth
century in the fields; but they were not confined to the fields.
In 1 3 03 a student was attacked and killed while playing at ball
with others in Oxford High Street; 2 and Robert Braybrooke,
bishop of London, complained in 1385 that people played at
ball both within and without St. Paul's, breaking windows
and damaging the sculpture. 3 The game known as handball
may have been some form of fives which was commonly
played between the buttresses of buildings (as at Eton). We do
not, however, hear how games were played, but rather that
they ought not to be played at all. Thus in 1365 the sheriffs
throughout England were required to issue a proclamation forx
bidding all able-bodied men under pain of imprisonment *to
meddle in hurling ofstones, loggats and quoits, handball, foot"
ball, club ball, cambuc, cock fighting or other vain games ofno
value*. Instead, on Sundays and holidays they must practise
with bows and arrows, for thus 'by God's help came forth
honour to the kingdom and advantage to the king in his actions
ofwar*. The government no doubt had in mind the decline in
the fortunes of war since the glorious victories of Crecy and
Poitiers won by the British archers. In 1388 the gist of the
1 E. K. Chambers, Me&eval Stag* i, p. 189.
2 Records ofMefaval Oxford, ed. H. E, Salter (1912), p. n.
3 Wilkins, Condlta, iii, p. 194.