As things began to ease up, they picked up some of the old sports again--horse-racing, fox-hunting and jousting. The men were intensely interested in politics.
Court Day was one of the biggest events for the men in those days. These were colorful occasions, with the hundreds of people gathered together, horses tied to the rails and ox-carts, stallions and hucksters all milling about the green. This was an opportunity for making a little cash. There was a man at Heathsville, at one time, who made a specialty of "cent cakes" on Court Days. These were of especial interest to little boys who came with their fathers. The cakes were big round and flat and had one raisin in the center of each. Negro women cooked oyster stews in the open and served them on tables improvised from dry-goods boxes and covered with clean sheets. Bars were in full swing, brass knucks, pistols and knives glinted here and there. There were many fights, or tests of prowess. It was often late at night when the revelers, or perhaps their horses, found the way home over rough country roads.
The women had less exciting pleasures, such as quilting parties, "spending the day" with a neighbor, and church socials.
The colonial pattern of living and way of speech lingered on until the beginning of the twentieth century. Tradition tells of a wedding feast as late as 1872 where roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, conical sugar loaves and butter sculptured in the form of Solomon's Temple were featured. The flavor of seventeenth century England still lingered in the Northern Neck at that time.
The marriages between the families of the Neck were endless and thus the Anglo-Saxon strain remained pure in the region.
The early population in the Northern Neck were mostly from London and the surrounding counties where the classic English language of Shakespeare was spoken.
There is evidence that the speech of the people of the Northern Neck had from early days little of the provincial or dialectal about it.
Until the early part of the twentieth century such Shakespearean expressions as, "wrack upon ruin" and "all mommicked up," were commonly used in the Neck. The now archaic word mommick meant to mutilate. The play of the double noun was also frequently heard until a late date--men-folks, women-folks, baby-child, man-child, boy-man, and so on.