m the Lives of the Saints: there were tournaments to
look at. Then there were the Festivals of the year, Christmas Day,
Twelfth Day, Easter, the Day of St. John the Baptist, Shrove Tuesday,
the Day of the Company, May Day, at all of which feasting and merriment
were the rule. The young men, in winter, played at football, hockey,
quarterstaff, and single stick. They had cock fighting, boar fights, and
the baiting of bulls and bears. On May Day they erected a May-pole in
every parish: they chose a May Queen: and they had morris-dancing with
the lads dressed up as Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, Tom the
Piper, and other famous characters.

[Illustration: BEAR-BAITING.

(_From the Luttrell Psalter._)]

Then they shot with the bow and the cross-bow for prizes: they had
wrestlings and they had foot races.

The two great festivals of the year were the Eve of St. John the Baptist
and the Day of the Company.

[Illustration: SHOOTING AT THE BUTTS WITH THE LONG-BOW.]

On the former there took place the March of the Watch. Bonfires were lit
in the streets, not for warmth but in order to purge and cleanse the air
of the narrow streets: at the open doors stood tables with meat and
drink, neighbour inviting neighbour to hospitality. Then the doors were
wreathed with green branches, leaves, and flowers: lamps of glass were
hanging over them with oil burning all the night: some hung out branches
of iron curiously wrought with hundreds of hanging lights. And
everywhere the cheerful sounds of music and singing and the dancing of
the prentice lads and girls in the open street. Through the midst of
this joyousness filed the Watch. Four thousand men took part in this
procession which was certainly the finest thing that Mediaeval London had
to show. To light the procession on its way the City found two hundred
cressets or lanterns, the Companies found five hundred and the
constables of London, two hundred and fifty in number, each carried one.
The number of men who carried and attended to the cressets was two
thousand. Then followed the Watch itself, consisting of two thousand
captains, lieutenants, sergeants, drummers and fifers, standard bearers,
trumpeters, demilances on great horses, bowmen, pikemen, with
morris-dancers and minstrels--their armour all polished bright and some
even gilded. No painter has ever painted this March: yet of all things,
mediaeval, it was the most beautiful and the most mediaeval.

On the day of the