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An ancient rural game, commonly played round stacks of barley, or other grain, in which some of the party attempt to catch others who run from a goal.

A law made by husbandmen respecting rural affairs; a rustic or local law or by-law. [Written also byrlaw, birlie, birley.]

A pastoral poem, representing rural affairs, and the life, manners, and occupation of shepherds; as, the Bucolics of Theocritus and Virgil. Dryden.

A hut; a cottage; a small house. [Obs.] Hearken a while from thy green cabinet, The rural song of careful Colinet. Spenser.

ointed in the ancient church by a diocesan bishop to exercise episcopal jurisdiction in a rural district.

A native or resident of the city of London; -- used contemptuosly. A cockney in a rural village was stared at as much as if he had entered a kraal of Hottentots. Macaulay.

To give a rural appearance to; to cause to appear rustic. Lamb.

Rural regions, as opposed to a city or town. As they walked, on their way into the country. Mark xvi. 12 (Rev. Ver. ). God made the covatry, and man made the town. Cowper. Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Macualay.

A particular rural district; a country neighborhood. [Eng.] W. Black. Blackmore.

parallel to the bowling crease and at least as long as the latter. J. H. Walsh (Encyc. of Rural Sports).

culiarity relative to spiritual superiors and the jurisdiction exercised in it. [Eng.] -- Rural dean, one having, under the bishop, the especial care and inspection of the clergy within certain parishes or districts of the diocese.

The territorial jurisdiction of a dean. Each archdeaconry is divided into rural deaneries, and each deanery is divided into parishes. Blackstone.

number of deaths to the population. At all ages the death rate is higher in towns than in rural districts. Darwin. -- Death rattle, a rattling or gurgling in the throat of a dying person. -- Death's door, the boundary of life; the partition dividing life from death. -- Death stroke, a stroke causing death. -- Death…

han can be disposed of. T. Burnet. I have disposed of her to a man of business. Tatler. A rural judge disposed of beauty's prize. Waller.

An old rural game. With any boy at dust-point they shall play. Peacham (1620).

ry diminutive person; a dwarf. Elf arrow, a flint arrowhead; - - so called by the English rural folk who often find these objects of prehistoric make in the fields and formerly attributed them to fairies; -- called also elf bolt, elf dart, and elf shot. -- Elf child, a child supposed to be left by elves, in room of on…

Equicrural. [Obs.]

A festival. Fête champêtre ( Etym: [F.], a festival or entertainment in the open air; a rural festival.

t, a preparation of fine oatmeal for feeding caged birds. -- Fig faun, one of a class of rural deities or monsters supposed to live on figs. "Therefore shall dragons dwell there with the fig fauns." Jer. i. 39. (Douay version). -- Fig gnat (Zoöl.), a small fly said to be injurious to figs. -- Fig leaf, the leaf tree…

A rural poem; a poetical composition on husbandry, containing rules for cultivating lands, etc.; as, the Georgics of Virgil.