This is pancake day!"

and the men also indulged in tip-cat, or billet.

There is one other custom, of a most barbarous and cruel
description, which was practised on Shrove Tuesday by our
forefathers, and which happily has perished,[6] and that was
throwing at cocks or hens with sticks. The poor bird was tied by the
leg, and its tormentors stood twenty-two yards distant and had three
throws each for twopence, winning the bird if they could knock it
down. The cock was trained beforehand to avoid the sticks, so as to
win more money for its brutal master. Well might a learned
foreigner remark, "The English eat a certain cake on Shrove Tuesday,
upon which they immediately run mad, and kill their poor cocks."
Cock-fighting was a favourite amusement on Shrove Tuesday, as well
as at other times. This shameful and barbarous practice was
continued until the eighteenth century; some of our kings took
delight in it, and in the old grammar schools in the North of
England it was sanctioned by the masters, who received from their
scholars a small tax called "cock-fight dues." Happily, with
bull-baiting, bear-baiting, dog-fighting, and the like, this cruel
and brutal pastime has ceased to exist. If we have lost some of the
simple joys and cheerful light-heartedness of our forefathers, we
have also happily lost some of their cruel disregard for the
sufferings of animals, and abandoned such barbarous amusements as I
have tried to describe. But the old sports of England were not all
like these; the archery, running, leaping, wrestling, football, and
other games in which our ancestors delighted, made the young men of
England a manly and a sturdy race, and our nation mainly owes its
greatness to the courage, manliness, and daring of her sons.