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Updated: May 10, 2025
"We have shed no blood yet, and I hope we never shall," said the senior officer, pleasantly. "The smugglers of this coast are too wise, and I hope too kind-hearted, for that sort of work. They are not like those desperate scoundrels of Sussex. When these men are nabbed, they give up their venture as soon as it goes beyond cudgel-play, and they never lie in wait for a murderous revenge.
A very 'tomrig and rump-scuttle, she knew only the sports of boys: her war-like spirit counted no excuse too slight for a battle; and so valiant a lad was she of her hands, so well skilled in cudgel-play, that none ever wrested a victory from fighting Moll.
Any thick stick under two feet long, such as a watchman's staff or a policeman's truncheon, may be fairly called a cudgel, and it is not so long ago that cudgel-play formed one of the chief attractions at country fairs in many parts of England.
The Reading Mercury of May 24, 1819, advertised the rural sports at Peppard, when the not very magnificent prize of eighteenpence was offered to every man who broke a head at cudgel-play, and a shilling to every one who had his head broken. Such was the sport which our old Berkshire rustics delighted in.
Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little fellow in a yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-footman's cane, who dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play. He was a policeman of the Algerian capital.
She was a ship-child, a sea-girl if ever there was one. And of course she loved Jasper and trusted him; but there was a shade of anxiety in her pride. It is very fine and romantic to possess for your very own a finely tempered and trusty sword-blade, but whether it is the best weapon to counter with the common cudgel-play of Fate that's another question.
He unluckily took lessons in his youth in the noble science of defence, and having accomplished himself in the use of his limbs and his weapons and become a perfect master at boxing and cudgel-play, he has had a troublesome life of it ever since.
The sports were of the sort characteristic of such a gathering wrestling and foot-races, target-shooting and bouts at cudgel-play and night-stick. Towards the middle of the afternoon, when the athletic prowess of the young men had been fully exploited, came the great spectacle, the bull-fight, and of this it will be necessary to speak somewhat particularly.
Berkshire and Somersetshire were the ancestral homes of cudgel-play, quarter-staff, and single-stick. Skating and pole-leaping were the characteristic sports of the fen country. Kent and Sussex were famous for their cricket; the northern counties for their football.
"It was now," he said, "nearly extinct, but he had accidentally met with traces of it in the neighbourhood, and had encouraged its revival; though, to tell the truth, it was too apt to be followed up by rough cudgel-play and broken heads in the evening." After the dance was concluded, the whole party was entertained with brawn and beef, and stout home-brewed.
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