[Anon.], ‘Derby Foot-Ball, On Shrove-Tuesday’, London Saturday Journal (1840)

One of the most popular amusements of Derbyshire, on Shrove Tuesday, is the athletic game of foot-ball; a game which lays fast hold of the affections of the Peakrill, and is followed with enthusiasm by every man who can pronounce the Shibboleth of his country, the name of Darran. The inhabitants of Derby are born foot-ball players; – the game seems interwoven with their existence; they have drunk it with their mothers’ milk, and it animates them through their lives. Enthusiasm is but a cold word for their attachment to it; on Shrove Tuesday it is a passion irresistible, which bears down before it every obstacle, and defies the law, the magistracy, the police.