I am not quite of a mind, however, with Samuel Richardson who owned a hobby-horse and rode on his hearth-rug in the intervals of writing "Pamela."

As for the hobby-horse itself, I have not heard whether it was of the usual nursery type, or whether it was built in the likeness of the leather camels of a German steamship.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the May sports in vogue were, besides a contest of archery, four pageants,the Kingham, or election of a Lord and Lady of the May, otherwise called Summer King and Queen, the Morris-Dance, the Hobby-Horse, and the "Robin Hood.

Under these circumstances we cannot be surprised to find the principal performers in the May pageants passing the one into the other,to find the May King, whose occupation was gone when the gallant outlaw had supplanted him in the favor of the Lady, assuming the part of the Hobby-Horse, Robin Hood usurping the title of King of the May, and the Hobby-Horse entering into a contest with the Dragon, as St. George.

Under these circumstances we cannot be surprised to find the principal performers in the May pageants passing the one into the other,to find the May King, whose occupation was gone when the gallant outlaw had supplanted him in the favor of the Lady, assuming the part of the Hobby-Horse, Robin Hood usurping the title of King of the May, and the Hobby-Horse entering into a contest with the Dragon, as St. George.

The other furnishes nothing peculiar except a name: the ceremony is called a hoodening, and the hobby-horse a hooden.

In the rider with bow and arrows Kuhn sees Robin Hood and the Hobby-Horse, and in the name hooden (which is explained by the authority he quotes to mean wooden) he discovers a provincial form of wooden, which connects the outlaw and the divinity.

"] [Footnote 12: Thus, in Kent, the Hobby-Horse is called hooden, i.e. wooden.

He thought the child should be told that in heaven he should have his hobby-horse.

"But to throw downe the walls and Gates of Rome To make an entrance for an Hobby-horse; To vaunt to th'people his ridiculous spoyles; To come with Lawrell and with Olyves crown'd For having been the worst of all the singers, Is beyond Patience!"

VER goes in, and fetcheth out the hobby-horse and the morris-dance, who dance about. SUM.

She hath made my heart leap like a hobby-horse!

" The hobby-horse was a basket-horse used in morris-dances and May games.

THE HOBBY-HORSE I had a little hobby-horse, And it was dapple gray; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay.

[Object of desire] desideratum; want &c (requirement) 630; a consummation devoutly to be wished; attraction, magnet, allurement, fancy, temptation, seduction, fascination, prestige, height of one's ambition, idol; whim, whimsy, whimsey^; maggot; hobby, hobby-horse.

For though Shakspeare himself seemed to think with regret that the dirge of the hobby-horse had been sung, yet, as we ourselves have given evidence, it is impossible for any one to write on this subject without taking an occasional airing on one or more of those imaginary steeds that stand at livery with no risk of eating off their own heads.

Of course, such a book has not been the work of a day, month, or, perhaps, a year; and its literature entitles it to a permanent place in the library, where we hope to see it stand auro perennius; were its fate to be otherwise, we should condemn the publicfor we hate ingratitude in every shapeand write in the first page the epitaphFor, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.

This place is remarkable, or was lately, for a sport on New Year's Day and Twelfth Day, called The Hobby-Horse Dance, from a person who rode upon the image of a horse, with a bow and arrow in his hands, with which he made a snapping noise, and kept time to the music, while six men danced the hay and other country dances, with as many deer's heads on their shoulders.

To this hobby-horse belonged a pot, which the reeves of the town kept filled with cakes and ale, towards which the spectators contributed a penny, and with the remainder they maintained their poor and repaired the church.

though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anythingexcept the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby-horse?

Was there ever a war, since the days of the Greek hobby-horse, since the days of Rahab's basket indeed, in which a woman did not have some part?

He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers.

As the mood seizes him he plays the rôle of fireman for hours together; goes carol-singing in his sledge, and reaps his harvest of coppers from the houses of his subjects; rides a hobby-horse at a village fair, and shrieks with laughter until he falls off; or plies saw and plane in a shipbuilding yard, sharing the meals and drinking bouts of his fellow-workmen.

MORRIS-DANCE, a rustic merrymaking common in England after 1350, and still extant; is of disputed origin; the chief characters, Maid Marian, Robin Hood, the hobby-horse, and the fool, execute fantastic movements and Jingle bells fastened to their feet and dress.

It would not be imaginable to any person free from hobby-horse or fanciful attachments, how much mortification such an incident occasions.