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BARNES (MR.). 23 |
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Sir John Suckling also has given a description of this pastime with allegorical personages, which is quoted by Brand. In Holiday's play of the Marriages of the Arts, 1618, this sport is introduced, and also by Herrick (Hesperides, p. 44). Barley-break is several times alluded to in Massinger's plays: see the Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger, 1779, i. 167. " We'll run at barley-break first, and you shall be in hell" (Dekker's The Honest Whore). " Hee's at barli-break, and the last couple are now in hell" (Dekker's The Virgin Martir). See Gifford's Massinger, i. 104, edit. 1813. See also Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, published in 1614, Book I., Song 3, p. j6.
Randle Holme mentions this game as prevailing in his day in Lancashire. Harland and Wilkinson believe this game to have left its traces in Yorkshire and Lancashire. A couple link hands and sally forth from home, shouting something like
Aggery, ag, ag, Ag's gi'en warning,
and trying to tick or touch with the free hand any of the boys running about separately. These latter try to slip behind the couple and throw their weight on the joined hands to separate them without being first touched or ticked; and if they sunder the couple, each of the severed ones has to carry one home on his back. Whoever is touched takes the place of the toucher in the linked couple (Legends of Lancashire, p. 138). The modern name of this game is " Prison Bars" (Ibid., p. 141). There is also a description of the game in a little tract called Barley Br eake ; or, A Warning for Wantons, 1607. It is mentioned in Wilbraham's Cheshire Glossary as " an old Cheshire game." Barnes, in his Dorsetshire Glossary, says he has seen it played with one catcher on hands and knees in the small ring (Hell), and the others dancing round the ring crying "Burn the wold witch, you barley breech." Holland [Cheshire Glossary) also mentions it as an old Cheshire game. See " Boggle about the Stacks," " Scots and English."
Barnes (Mr.)
Mr. Barnes is dead and gone,
And left his widder, |
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