The Tumbler's Guile . 
53 
Hills in Gloucestershire. It has been said that the rural games which 
constituted this anniversary were founded by one Robert Dover, on the 
accession of James I., but it appears to be ascertained that Dover was 
only the reviver, with additional splendour, of sports which had been 
yearly exhibited, at an early period, on the same spot, and perhaps 
only discontinued for a short time before this revival in 1603/’ 
In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Slender asks Page , “ How 
does your fallow greyhound, sir ? I heard say he was out¬ 
run on Cotsall ? ” (i. 1). 
Joshua Sylvester interpolates into his translation of 
Du Bartas a simile drawn apparently from his personal 
recollection of these games:— 
“ So have I seen on Lamborn’s pleasant douns, 
When yelping begles or some deeper hounds 
Have start a hare, how milk-white Minks and Lun 
(Gray-bitches both, the best that ever run) 
Held in one leash, have leapt and strain’d, and whin’d 
They might be slipt, to purpose ; that (for sport) 
Watt might have law neither too-long nor short.” 
(Page 182.) 
The Tumbler was principally used in taking rabbits. 
It acquired this name from the eccentricity ^ ^ 
of its movements. It ran in a circle, and 
then suddenly turned upon its prey, in the manner thus 
described by William Browne in his pastorals :— 
“ As I have seene 
A nimble tumbler on a burrow’d greene 
Bend cleane awry his course yet give a checke, 
And throw himself upon a rabbet’s necke.” 
(Britannia’s Pastorals , book ii., song 4.) 
These dogs, according to Caius,— 
“are somewhat lesser then the houndes, and they be lancker and 
leaner, beside that they be somwhat prick eared. A man that shall 
marke the forme and fashion of their bodyes, may well call them 
mungrell grehoundes if they were somwhat bigger. But notwith¬ 
standing they countervaile not the grehound in greatnes, yet will he 
take in one dayes space as many connyes as shall arise to as bigge a 
