rite 'house.' The publican at the
successful house stands beer."{47}

Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving the
tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock--the head of a
sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also the
familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a struggle
between the people of two villages to get such a head, with all its
fertilizing properties, over their own boundary.{48} At Hornchurch in
Essex, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an actual boar's head was
wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards feasted upon at one of the
public-houses by the victor and his friends.{49}

One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned (it points
apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning after the game,
used to be "smoked" over a straw fire. "He was suspended above the fire
and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then
allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to
scramble out as he could."{50}

Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an |349|
account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence Gomme, in his
book "The Village Community," from the _Oswestry Observer_ of March 2,
1887:--"In South Cardiganshire it seems that about eighty years ago the
population, rich and poor, male and female, of opposing parishes, turned
out on Christmas Day and indulged in the game of football with such
vigour that it became little short of a serious fight." Both in north and
south Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near Lampeter,
there was a struggle between two parties with different traditions of
race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from Irish people, occupied
the high ground of the parish; the Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred
Brythons, occupied the lowlands. After morning service on Christmas Day,
"the whole of the Bros and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female,
assembled on the turnpike road which divided the highlands from the
lowlands." The ball was thrown high in the air, "and when it fell Bros
and Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook or by
crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to their hamlet
of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus were successful if they
got the ball to their end of the parish at New Court." Many severe kicks
were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly