When we think of winter amusements in the past somehow we conjure up pictures of hard frosts and crisp snow, although rain, damp, and fog were probably frequent visitors in Old England. Some of the games can be traced back to very early days--such, for instance, as skating, many ancient skates having been found. There is a remarkable contrast between the beautifully made skates now used on the comparatively rare occasions when the ice bears and the roller skates used all the year round, to those curious bone skates, so very primitive in their construction, examples of which are to be found in several local museums. In the Hull Museum, among the Market Weighton antiquities, there is a choice collection from East Yorkshire; one, made from the cannon bone of a horse, is smooth and well polished, having seen some active use, evidently belonging to some skater in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
The bone skates were fastened on to the feet much the same as metal skates, but they had no cutting edges, and consequently the skater carried a stick shod with an iron point, and by its aid propelled himself forward. Fitzstephen, writing in the time of Edward II, describes the ponds at Moorfields where the citizens of London skated. The ponds have long been dried up and built over; it is there, however, where, during excavations, some very fine examples of the old bone skates have been found.
Among the relics of old sport met with are the curious and often beautifully embroidered hoods of white leather used in the days of hawking. These pretty little hoods, which were placed over the head of the hawk when carried on the wrist to the hunting field, were often embroidered in panels and furnished with braces for tying round the hawk's head. In the British Museum there is a curious silver lock-ring for a hawk engraved with arms and owner's name, apparently of seventeenth-century workmanship. No doubt the real purport of such curios is often overlooked, for not infrequently hawks' hoods have been found amongst old dolls' clothing, having been given to children in later years as playthings.
Eastern weapons have been brought over to this country in large numbers, some of them very ancient. It is said that among some of the Arab tribes it is no uncommon thing to meet with swords and daggers of antique form, richly damascened, and sometimes with jewelled hilts, made a thousand years or more ago, and a few years ago Crusaders' relics could be met with in the East. Many of these knives have silica blades, some of the handles being of jade. Those of grey jade are often piqué with gold, others, of ivory, being inlaid with jewels.