Many of the inn signs to be met with in the old provincial trading centres recall the sports of our ancestors. Too often these were of a brutal and barbarous character, suited only to an age which took its pleasures strenuously and knew nothing of squeamishness and delicate nerves. Not that we of the twentieth century are at heart one whit more humane. The cockney who would faint at the bloodshed and slaughter in a bull-ring, devours greedily in his Sunday newspaper all the details of a horrible murder, or a railway accident.
Bull-running and bull-baiting was an attraction only rivalled by bear-baiting. The corporations of some towns had a by-law forbidding butchers to exhibit bull beef for sale, unless the animal had previously been baited by dogs for the amusement of the populace. Over the entrance of the ancient Butchers’ Hall at Hereford, still hangs the bull-ring that was used on these occasions. It required the introduction of several fruitless bills into the House of Commons between 1802 and 1835, before an Act was finally passed to abolish the practice. _Dog and Bear_ is a very common sign, usually Jacobean in its origin. _Bull and Ring_, _Dog and Bull_, _Bull and Butcher_, are all somewhat rare.
[Illustration: Horse and Groom, near Waltham St. Lawrence]
Cock-fighting was a very favourite spectacle from the earliest times, enjoyed heartily by gentle and serf, young and old, learned and simple. Nature intended the game-cock to strive for mastery with his rival, and with the weapons provided by nature the combat has a fearful interest for the modern British boy, as each spring new conflicts recur in the farmyard. But the art of the Elizabethan sportsman supplemented nature with a sharp spur of steel. A graphic account of a cock-fight is given by Count Kilmansegge in his “Diary of a Journey to England, 1761-2.” The scene is to be identified by the little passage from Queen Anne’s Gate to Birdcage Walk, still known as Cock-Pit Alley.
“On the 1st February, we went to see a cock-fight, which lasted the whole of the week, where heavy bets, made by the Duke of Ancaster and others, for more than 100 guineas were at stake. The fight takes place at the Cock-Pit close to St. James’s Park, in the vicinity of Westminster. In the middle of a circle and a gallery surrounded by benches, a slightly-raised theatre is erected upon which the cocks fight; they are a small kind of cock, to the legs of which a long spur, like a long needle is fixed, with which they know how to inflict damage on their adversaries very cleverly during the fight, but on which also they are frequently caught themselves, so breaking their legs. One bird of each of the couples which we saw fighting met with this misfortune, so that he was down in a moment, and unable to raise or to help himself, consequently his adversary at once had an enormous advantage. Notwithstanding this, he fought with his beak for half an hour but the other bird had the best of it, and both were carried off with bleeding heads. No one who has not seen such a sight can conceive the uproar by which it is accompanied, as everybody at the same time offers and accepts bets.... We were satisfied with seeing two fights, although we might have remained to see still more for the half-crown which we paid on entering.”