: The sacre, and the sacret, for a knight. - Joseph Strutt

The English are particularised for their partiality to strange sights; uncommon beasts, birds, or fishes, are sure to attract their notice, and especially such of them as are of the monstrous kind; and this propensity of our countrymen is neatly satirised by Shakspeare in the Tempest; where Stephano, seeing Calaban lying upon the stage, and being uncertain whether he was a fish, a beast, or one of the inhabitants of the island, speaks in the following manner: "Were I in England now, as once I was, and had this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give me a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man: any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." Indeed, we may observe that a cow with two heads, a pig with six legs, or any other unnatural production, with proper management, are pretty certain fortunes to the possessors.

Dio Nicæus, an ancient author, speaking of the inhabitants of the northern parts of this island, tells us, they were a fierce and barbarous people, who tilled no ground, but lived upon the depredations they committed in the southern districts, or upon the food they procured by hunting.

Selden asserts, and in my opinion with great justice, that all these whimsical transpositions of dignity are derived from the ancient Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn, when the masters waited upon their servants, who were honoured with mock titles, and permitted to assume the state and deportment of their lords. These fooleries were exceedingly popular, and continued to be practised long after the establishment of Christianity, in defiance of the threatenings and the remonstrances of the clergy, who, finding it impossible to divert the stream of vulgar prejudice permitted them to be exercised, but changed the primitive object of devotion; so that the same unhallowed orgies, which had disgraced the worship of a heathen deity, were dedicated, as it was called, to the service of the true God, and sanctioned by the appellation of a Christian institution. From this polluted stock branched out variety of unseemly and immoral sports; but none of them more daringly impious and outrageous to common sense, than the Festival of Fools, in which the most sacred rites and ceremonies of the church were turned into ridicule, and the ecclesiastics themselves participated in the abominable profanations.