Note 443 — Vol. II.—47.
Reading edition
Hatton’s New View of London, 1708, 8vo. p. 607.
[444] See the “Narrative,” by R. Lowman, 1685, folio, half sheet, 1685.
[445]
“——————— a citizen Of credit and renown, A trainband captain——.”—Cowper.
[446] Harl. MSS. 1368.
[447] Ibid. 2125.
[448] Strutt’s Sports, Pref. p. xxvi.
[449] Noorthouck writing in 1773, (Hist. of London, 4to. p. 590,) erroneously affirms that the giants are made of pasteboard.
[450] Strutt, p. xxiii.
Giants were introduced into the May-games. “On the 26th of May, 1555, was a gay May-game at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, with giants and hobby-horses, drums and guns, morris-dancers, and other minstrels.”—(Strype’s Memorials.) Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” includes giants among the ordinary domestic recreations of winter.
[451] Strutt, p. 319.
[452] Brand, i. p. 257.
[453] Stilts to increase the stature of the giants, and the introduction of the morris-dance, are instances of the desire to gratify the fondness of our ancestors for strange sights and festive amusements. A cock dancing on stilts to the music of a pipe and tabor is in Strutt’s Sports, from a book of prayers written towards the close of the thirteenth century. Harl. MSS. 6563.
[454] Strutt’s Sports, Pref. p. xxvii.