forwards and a centre. The goals consist of two uprights 3 ft. high and 4 ft. apart. The ring, which takes the place of the ball or puck, is made of flexible rubber, and is 5 in. in diameter with a 3-in. opening through the centre. It weighs between 12 and 16 oz. The stick is a wand of light but tough wood, between 36 and 40 in. long, about 34 in. in diameter, provided with a 5-in. guard 20 in. from the lower end. The method of shooting is to insert the end of the stick in the hole of the ring and drive it towards the goal. A goal shot from the field counts one point, a goal from a foul 12 point. When a foul is called by the referee a player of the opposing side is allowed a free shot for goal from any point on the quarter line.
Roller Polo, played extensively during the winter months in the United States, is practically Ice Polo adapted to the floors of gymnasiums and halls, the players, five on a side, wearing roller-skates. The first professional league was organized in 1883.
HOCK-TIDE, an ancient general holiday in England, celebrated on the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter Sunday. Hock-Tuesday was an important term day, rents being then payable, for with Michaelmas it divided the rural year into its winter and summer halves. The derivation of the word is disputed: any analogy with Ger. hoch, “high,” being generally denied. No trace of the word is found in Old English, and “hock-day,” its earliest use in composition, appears first in the 12th century. The characteristic pastime of hock-tide was called binding. On Monday the women, on Tuesday the men, stopped all passers of the opposite sex and bound them with ropes till they bought their release with a small payment, or a rope was stretched across the highroads, and the passers were obliged to pay toll. The money thus collected seems to have gone towards parish expenses. Many entries are found in parish registers under “Hocktyde money.” The hock-tide celebration became obsolete in the beginning of the 18th century. At Coventry there was a play called “The Old Coventry Play of Hock Tuesday.” This, suppressed at the Reformation owing to the incidental disorder, and revived as part of the festivities on Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth in July 1575, depicted the struggle between Saxons and Danes, and has given colour to the suggestion that hock-tide was originally a commemoration of the massacre of the Danes on St Brice’s Day, the 13th of November A.D. 1002, or of the rejoicings at the death of Hardicanute on the 8th of June 1042 and the expulsion of the Danes. But the dates of these anniversaries do not bear this out.
HOCUS, a shortened form of “hocus pocus,” used in the 17th century in the sense of “to play a trick on any one,” to “hoax,” which is generally taken to be a derivative. “Hocus pocus” appears to have been a mock Latin expression first used as the name of a juggler or conjurer. Thus in Ady’s Candle in the Dark (1655), quoted in the New English Dictionary, “I will speak of one man ... that went about in King James his time ... who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery.” Tillotson’s guess (Sermons, xxvi.) that the phrase was a corruption of hoc est corpus and alluded to the words of the Eucharist, “in ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation,” has frequently been accepted as a serious derivation, but has no foundation. A connexion with a supposed demon of Scandinavian mythology, called “Ochus Bochus,” is equally unwarranted. “Hocus” is used as a verb, meaning to drug, stupefy with opium, &c., for a criminal purpose. This use dates from the beginning of the 19th century.
HODDEN (a word of unknown origin), a coarse kind of cloth made of undyed wool, formerly much worn by the peasantry of Scotland. It was usually made on small hand-looms by the peasants themselves. Grey hodden was made by mixing black and white fleeces together in the proportion of one to twelve when weaving.
HODDESDON, an urban district in the Hertford parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, near the river Lea, 17 m. N. from London by the Great Eastern railway (Broxbourne and Hoddesdon station on the Cambridge line). Pop. (1901), 4711. This is the northernmost of a series of populous townships extending from the suburbs of London along the Lea valley as far as its junction with the Stort, which is close to Hoddesdon. They are in the main residential. Hoddesdon was a famous coaching station on the Old North Road; and the Bull posting-house is mentioned in Matthew Prior’s “Down Hall.” The Lea has been a favourite resort of anglers (mainly for coarse fish in this part) from the time of Izaak Walton, in whose book Hoddesdon is specifically named. The church of St Augustine, Broxbourne, is a fine example of Perpendicular work, and contains interesting monuments, including an altar tomb with enamelled brasses of 1473. Hoddesdon probably covers the site of a Romano-British village.
HODEDA (Hodeida, Hadeda), a town in Arabia situated on the Red Sea coast 14° 48′ N. and 42° 57′ E. It lies on a beach of muddy sand exposed to the southerly and westerly winds. Steamers anchor more than a mile from shore, and merchandize has to be transhipped by means of sambuks or native boats. But Hodeda has become the chief centre of the maritime trade of Turkish Yemen, and has superseded Mokha as the great port of export of South Arabian coffee. The town is composed of stone-built houses of several storeys, and is surrounded, except on the sea face, by a fortified enceinte. The population is estimated at 33,000, and contains, besides the Arab inhabitants and the Turkish officials and garrison, a considerable foreign element, Greeks, Indians and African traders from the opposite coast. There are consulates of Great Britain, United States, France, Germany, Italy and Greece. The steam tonnage entering and clearing the port in 1904 amounted to 78,700 tons, the highest hitherto recorded. Regular services are maintained with Aden, and with Suez, Massowa and the other Red Sea ports. Large dhows bring dates from the Persian Gulf, and occasional steamers from Bombay call on their way to Jidda with cargoes of grain. The imports for 1904 amounted in value to £467,000, the chief items being piece goods, food grains and sugar; the exports amounted to £451,000, including coffee valued at £229,000.
HODENING, an ancient Christmas custom still surviving in Wales, Kent, Lancashire and elsewhere. A horse’s skull or a wooden imitation on a pole is carried round by a party of youths, one of whom conceals himself under a white cloth to simulate the horse’s body, holding a lighted candle in the skull. They make a house-to-house visitation, begging gratuities. The “Penitential” of Archbishop Theodore (d. 690) speaks of “any who, on the kalands of January, clothe themselves with the skins of cattle and carry heads of animals.” This, coupled with the fact that among the primitive Scandinavians the horse was often the sacrifice made at the winter solstice to Odin for success in battle, has been thought to justify the theory that hodening is a corruption of Odining.
HODGE, CHARLES (1797–1878), American theologian, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of December 1797. He graduated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1815, and in 1819 at the Princeton Theological seminary, where he became an instructor in 1820, and the first professor of Oriental and Biblical literature in 1822. Meanwhile, in 1821, he had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister. From 1826 to 1828 he studied under de Sacy in Paris, under Gesenius and Tholuck in Halle, and under Hengstenberg, Neander and Humboldt in Berlin. In 1840 he was transferred to the chair of exegetical and didactic theology, to which subjects that of polemic theology was added in 1854, and this office he held until his death. In 1825 he established the quarterly Biblical Repertory, the title of which was changed to Biblical Repertory and Theological Review in 1830 and to Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review in 1837. With it, in 1840, was merged the Literary and Theological Review of New York, and in 1872 the American Presbyterian Review of New York, the title becoming Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review in 1872 and Princeton Review in 1877. He secured for it the position of theological organ of the Old School division of the Presbyterian church, and continued its principal editor and contributor until 1868, when the Rev. Lyman H. Atwater became his colleague. His more important essays were republished under the titles Essays and Reviews
