Grampian Club > Scotland, social and domestic

Public Sports. 201
by Mr. James Scott, in 1798* The writer says : —
" The religious festivals before the Reformation received
from the vulgar the name of play-days. The people on
these days were exempted from labour, and prohibited
by Acts of Parliament from holding fairs or mercats.
They therefore employed themselves in such diversions
as they found suitable to their several humours, except
during the short time in which they attended the
service of the Church or assisted at the ceremonies.
The annual processions were called plays, either because
of the pageantry which accompanied them, or because
of their emblematical representations, or the acting of
the mysteries."
For many years before the Eeformation municipal
corporations annually elected an "Abbot of Unreason,"
to lead the sports which were practised in the name of
that mock ecclesiastic on the first Sunday of May.
The Town Council of Aberdeen chose two personages,
who were respectively designated the Abbot and Prior
of Bon- Accord. These originally conducted exhibitions
of a sacred description, latterly they commemorated
persons and events of a precisely opposite character.
At the period of the Reformation the Abbot and Prior
of Bon- Accord arrayed themselves in green, with yellow
bows and brass arrows, as imitators of Robin Hood and
Little John, whose lawless conduct they imitated. The
Abbot of Unreason became, at length, so unpopular,
that burgesses were everywhere indisposed to undertake
the duties, and were content, on being elected, to pay
the penalties exacted on its declinature. On this
subject, some excerpts from the Town Council Records
of Haddington may be read with interest : —
* Preserved in the Advocates Library.