THE SWORD-DANCE
[_Bibliographical Note._--The books mentioned in the
bibliographical note to the last chapter should be consulted on
the general tendency to μίμησις in festival dance and song. The
symbolical dramatic ceremonies of the _renouveau_ are collected
by Dr. J. G. Frazer in _The Golden Bough_. The sword-dance has
been the subject of two elaborate studies: K. Müllenhoff, _Ueber
den Schwerttanz_, in _Festgaben für Gustav Homeyer_ (1871), iii,
with additions in _Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum_, xviii.
9, xx. 10; and F. A. Mayer, _Ein deutsches Schwerttanzspiel
aus Ungarn_ (with full bibliography), in _Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie_ (1889), 204, 416. The best accounts of the
morris-dance are in F. Douce, _Illustrations of Shakespeare_
(1807, new ed. 1839), and A. Burton, _Rushbearing_ (1891), 95.]
The last two chapters have afforded more than one example of village
festival customs ultimately taking shape as drama. But neither the
English Robin Hood plays, nor the French _Jeu de Robin et Marion_, can
be regarded as folk-drama in the proper sense of the word. They were
written not by the folk themselves, but by _trouvères_ or minstrels
_for_ the folk; and at a period when the independent evolution of
the religious play had already set a model of dramatic composition.
Probably the same is true of the Hox Tuesday play in the form in which
we may conjecture it to have been presented before Elizabeth late in
the sixteenth century. Nevertheless it is possible to trace, apart
from minstrel intervention and apart from imitation of miracles, the
existence of certain embryonic dramatic tendencies in the village
ceremonies themselves. Too much must not be made of these. Jacob Grimm
was inclined to find in them the first vague beginnings of the whole of
modern drama[625]. This is demonstrably wrong. Modern drama arose, by
a fairly well defined line of evolution, from a threefold source, the
ecclesiastical liturgy, the farce of the mimes, the classical revivals
of humanism. Folk-drama contributed but the tiniest rill to the mighty
stream. Such as it was, however, a couple of further chapters may be
not unprofitably spent in its analysis.
The festival customs include a number of dramatic rites which appear
to have been originally symbolical expressions of the facts of
seasonal recurrence lying at the root of the festivals themselves. The
antithesis of winter and summer, the _renouveau_ of spring, are mimed
in three or four distinct fashions. The first and the most important,
as well as the most widespread of these, is the mock representation
of a death or burial. Dr. Frazer has collected many instances of the
ceremony known as the ‘expulsion of Death[626].’ This takes place
at various dates in spring and early summer, but most often on the
fourth Sunday in Lent, one of the many names of which is consequently
_Todten-Sonntag_. An effigy is made, generally of straw, but in some
cases of birch twigs, a beechen bough, or other such material. This
is called Death, is treated with marks of fear, hatred or contempt,
and is finally carried in procession, and thrust over the boundary of
the village. Or it is torn in pieces, buried, burnt, or thrown into
a river or pool. Sometimes the health or other welfare of the folk
during the year is held to depend on the rite being duly performed. The
fragments of Death have fertilizing efficacy for women and cattle; they
are put in the fields, the mangers, the hens’ nests. Here and there
women alone take part in the ceremony, but more often it is common to
the whole village. The expulsion of Death is found in various parts
of Teutonic Germany, but especially in districts such as Thuringia,
Bohemia, Silesia, where the population is wholly or mainly Slavonic. A
similar custom, known both in Slavonic districts and in Italy, France,
and Spain, had the name of ‘sawing the old woman.’ At Florence, for
instance, the effigy of an old woman was placed on a ladder. At Mid
Lent it was sawn through, and the nuts and dried fruits with which it
was stuffed scrambled for by the crowd. At Palermo there was a still
more realistic representation with a real old woman, to whose neck a
bladder of blood was fitted[627].
The ‘Death’ of the German and Slavonic form of the custom has clearly
come to be regarded as the personification of the forces of evil within
the village; and the ceremony of expulsion may be compared with other
periodical rites, European and non-European, in which evil spirits are
similarly expelled[628]. The effigy may even be regarded in the light
of a scapegoat, bearing away the sins of the community[629]. But it is
doubtful how far the notion of evil spirits warring against the good
spirits which protect man and his crops is a European, or at any rate
a primitive European one[630]; and it may perhaps be taken for granted
that what was originally thought to be expelled in the rite was not so
much either ‘Death’ or ‘Sin’ as winter. This view is confirmed by the
evidence of an eighth-century homily, which speaks of the expulsion
of winter in February as a relic of pagan belief[631]. Moreover, the
expulsion of Death is often found in the closest relation to the more
widespread custom of bringing summer, in the shape of green tree or
bough, into the village. The procession which carries away the dead
effigy brings back the summer tree; and the rhymes used treat the two
events as connected[632].
The homily just quoted suggests that the mock funeral or expulsion of
winter was no new thing in the eighth century. On the other hand, it
can hardly be supposed that customs which imply such abstract ideas
as death, or even as summer and winter, belong to the earliest stages
of the village festival. What has happened is what happens in other
forms of festival play. The instinct of play, in this case finding
vent in a dramatic representation of the succession of summer to
winter, has taken hold of and adapted to its own purposes elements
in the celebrations which, once significant, have gradually come to
be mere traditional survivals. Such are the ceremonial burial in the
ground, the ceremonial burning, the ceremonial plunging into water,
of the representative of the fertilization spirit. In particular,
the southern term ‘the old woman’ suggests that the effigy expelled
or destroyed is none other than the ‘corn mother’ or ‘harvest-May,’
fashioned to represent the fertilization spirit out of the last sheaf
at harvest, and preserved until its place is taken by a new and green
representative in the spring.
There are, however, other versions of the mock death in which the
central figure of the little drama is not the representative of the
fertilization spirit itself, but one of the worshippers. In Bavaria
the Whitsuntide _Pfingstl_ is dressed in leaves and water-plants with
a cap of peonies. He is soused with water, and then, in mimicry,
has his head cut off. Similar customs prevail in the Erzgebirge and
elsewhere[633]. We have seen this _Pfingstl_ before. He is the Jack in
the green, the worshipper clad in the god under whose protection he
desires to put himself[634]. But how can the killing of him symbolize
the spring, for obviously it is the coming summer, not the dying
winter, that the leaf-clad figure must represent? The fact is that the
Bavarian drama is not complete. The full ceremony is found in other
parts of Germany. Thus in Saxony and Thuringia a ‘wild man’ covered
with leaves and moss is hunted in a wood, caught, and executed. Then
comes forward a lad dressed as a doctor, who brings the victim to life
again by bleeding[635]. Even so annually the summer dies and has its
resurrection. In Swabia, again, on Shrove Tuesday, ‘Dr. Eisenbart’
bleeds a man to death, and afterwards revives him. This same Dr.
Eisenbart appears also in the Swabian Whitsuntide execution, although
here too the actual resurrection seems to have dropped out of the
ceremony[636]. It is interesting to note that the green man of the
peasantry, who dies and lives again, reappears as the Green Knight in
one of the most famous divisions of Arthurian romance[637].
The mock death or burial type of folk-drama resolves itself, then,
into two varieties. In one, it is winter whose passing is represented,
and for this the discarded harvest-May serves as a nucleus. In the
other, which is not really complete without a resurrection, it is
summer, whose death is mimed merely as a preliminary to its joyful
renewal; and this too is built up around a fragment of ancient cult
in the person of the leaf-clad worshipper, who is, indeed, none other
than the priest-king, once actually, and still in some sort and show,
slain at the festival[638]. In the instances so far dealt with, the
original significance of the rite is still fairly traceable. But there
are others into which new meanings, due to the influence of Christian
custom, have been read. In many parts of Germany customs closely
analogous to those of the expulsion of winter or Death take place
on Shrove Tuesday, and have suffered metamorphosis into ‘burial of
the Carnival[639].’ England affords the ‘Jack o’ Lent’ effigy which
is taken to represent Judas Iscariot[640], the Lincoln ‘funeral of
Alleluia[641],’ the Tenby ‘making Christ’s bed[642],’ the Monkton
‘risin’ and buryin’ Peter[643].’ The truth that the vitality of a folk
custom is far greater than that of any single interpretation of it is
admirably illustrated.
Two other symbolical representations of the phenomena of the
_renouveau_ must be very briefly treated. At Briançon in Dauphiné,
instead of a death and resurrection, is used a pretty little May-day
drama, in which the leaf-clad man falls into sleep upon the ground
and is awakened by the kiss of a maiden[644]. Russia has a similar
custom; and such a magic kiss, bringing summer with it, lies at the
heart of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Indeed, the marriage of
heaven and earth seems to have been a myth very early invented by the
Aryan mind to explain the fertility of crops beneath the rain, and
it probably received dramatic form in religious ceremonies both in
Greece and Italy[645]. Finally, there is a fairly widespread spring
custom of holding a dramatic fight between two parties, one clad in
green to represent summer, the other in straw or fur to represent
winter. Waldron describes this in the Isle of Man[646]; Olaus Magnus
in Sweden[647]. Grimm says that it is found in various districts on
both sides of the middle Rhine[648]. Perhaps both this dramatic battle
and that of the Coventry Hox Tuesday owe their origin to the struggle
for the fertilizing head of a sacrificial animal, which also issued
in football and similar games. Dr. Frazer quotes several instances
from all parts of the world in which a mock fight, or an interchange
of abuse and raillery taking the place of an actual fight, serves as
a crop-charm[649]. The summer and winter battle gave to literature a
famous type of neo-Latin and Romance _débat_[650]. In one of the most
interesting forms of this, the eighth-or ninth-century _Conflictus
Veris et Hiemis_, the subject of dispute is the cuckoo, which spring
praises and winter chides, while the shepherds declare that he must
be drowned or stolen away, because summer cometh not. The cuckoo is
everywhere a characteristic bird of spring, and his coming was probably
a primitive signal for the high summer festival[651].
The symbolical dramas of the seasons stand alone and independent,
but it may safely be asserted that drama first arose at the village
feasts in close relation to the dance. That dancing, like all the
arts, tends to be mimetic is a fact which did not escape the attention
of Aristotle[652]. The pantomimes of the decadent Roman stage are a
case in point. Greek tragedy itself had grown out of the Dionysiac
dithyramb, and travellers describe how readily the dances of the
modern savage take shape as primitive dramas of war, hunting, love,
religion, labour, or domestic life[653]. Doubtless this was the case
also with the _caroles_ of the European festivals. The types of
_chanson_ most immediately derived from these are full of dialogue, and
already on the point of bursting into drama. That they did do this,
with the aid of the minstrels, in the _Jeu de Robin et de Marion_
we have seen[654]. A curious passage in the _Itinerarium Cambriae_
of Giraldus Cambrensis (†1188) describes a dance of peasants in and
about the church of St. Elined, near Brecknock on the Gwyl Awst, in
which the ordinary operations of the village life, such as ploughing,
sewing, spinning were mimetically represented[655]. Such dances seem
to survive in some of the _rondes_ or ‘singing-games,’ so frequently
dramatic, of children[656]. On the whole, perhaps, these connect
themselves rather with the domestic than with the strictly agricultural
element in village cult. A large proportion of them are concerned with
marriage. But the domestic and the agricultural cannot be altogether
dissociated. The game of ‘Nuts in May,’ for instance, seems to have as
its kernel a reminiscence of marriage by capture; but the ‘nuts’ or
rather ‘knots’ or ‘posies’ ‘in May’ certainly suggest a setting at a
seasonal festival. So too, with ‘Round the Mulberry Bush.’ The mimicry
here is of domestic operations, but the ‘bush’ recalls the sacred
tree, the natural centre of the seasonal dances. The closest parallels
to the dance described by Giraldus Cambrensis are to be found in the
_rondes_ of ‘Oats and Beans and Barley’ and ‘Would you know how doth
the Peasant?’, in which the chief, though not always the only, subjects
of mimicry are ploughing, sowing and the like, and which frequently
contain a prayer or aspiration for the welfare of the crops[657].
I have treated the mimetic element of budding drama in the agricultural
festivals as being primarily a manifestation of the activities of play
determined in its direction by the dominant interests of the occasion,
and finding its material in the débris of ritual custom left over from
forgotten stages of religious thought. It is possible also to hold
that the _mimesis_ is more closely interwoven with the religious and
practical side of the festivals, and is in fact yet another example of
that primitive magical notion of causation by the production of the
similar, which is at the root of the rain-and sun-charms. Certainly the
village dramas, like the other ceremonies which they accompany, are
often regarded as influencing the luck of the farmer’s year; just as
the hunting-and war-dances of savages are often regarded not merely as
amusement or as practice for actual war and hunting, but as charms to
secure success in these pursuits[658]. But it does not seem clear to me
that in this case the magical efficacy belongs to the drama from the
beginning, and I incline to look upon it as merely part of the sanctity
of the feast as a whole, which has attached itself in the course of
time even to that side of it which began as play.
The evolution of folk-drama out of folk-dance may be most
completely studied through a comparison of the various types of
European sword-dance with the so-called ‘mummers’,’ ‘guisers’,’ or
‘Pace-eggers’’ play of Saint George. The history of the sword-dance
has received a good deal of attention from German archaeologists, who,
however, perhaps from imperfect acquaintance with the English data,
have stopped short of the affiliation to it of the play[659]. The
dance itself can boast a hoar antiquity. Tacitus describes it as the
one form of _spectaculum_ to be seen at the gatherings of the Germans
with whom he was conversant. The dancers were young men who leapt with
much agility amongst menacing spear-points and sword-blades[660]. Some
centuries later the use of _sweorda-gelac_ as a metaphor for battle in
_Beowulf_ shows that the term was known to the continental ancestors
of the Anglo-Saxons[661]. Then follows a long gap in the record,
bridged only by a doubtful reference in an eighth-century Frankish
homily[662], and a possible representation in a ninth-century Latin
and Anglo-Saxon manuscript[663]. The minstrels seem to have adopted
the sword-dance into their repertory[664], but the earliest mediaeval
notice of it as a popular _ludus_ is at Nuremberg in 1350. From that
date onwards until quite recent years it crops up frequently, alike
at Shrovetide, Christmas and other folk festivals, and as an element
in the revels at weddings, royal entries, and the like[665]. It is
fairly widespread throughout Germany. It is found in Italy, where it
is called the _mattaccino_[666], and in Spain (_matachin_), and under
this name or that of the _danse des bouffons_ it was known both in
France and England at the Renaissance[667]. It is given by Paradin
in his _Le Blason des Danses_ and, with the music and cuts of the
performers, by Tabourot in his _Orchésographie_ (1588)[668]. These are
the sophisticated versions of courtly halls. But about the same date
Olaus Magnus describes it as a folk-dance, to the accompaniment of
pipes or _cantilenae_, in Sweden[669]. In England, the main area of
the acknowledged sword-dance is in the north. It is found, according
to Mr. Henderson, from the Humber to the Cheviots; and it extends as
far south as Cheshire and Nottinghamshire[670]. Outlying examples are
recorded from Winchester[671] and from Devonshire[672]. In Scotland Sir
Walter Scott found it among the farthest Hebrides, and it has also been
traced in Fifeshire[673].
The name of _danse des bouffons_ sometimes given to the sword-dance
may be explained by a very constant feature of the English examples,
in which the dancers generally include or are accompanied by one or
more comic or grotesque personages. The types of these grotesques are
not kept very distinct in the descriptions, or, probably, in fact. But
they appear to be fundamentally two. There is the ‘Tommy’ or ‘fool,’
who wears the skin and tail of a fox or some other animal, and there is
the ‘Bessy,’ who is a man dressed in a woman’s clothes. And they can be
paralleled from outside England. A _Narr_ or _Fasching_ (carnival fool)
is a figure in several German sword-dances, and in one from Bohemia he
has his female counterpart in a _Mehlweib_[674].
With the _cantilenae_ noticed by Olaus Magnus may be compared the sets
of verses with which several modern sword-dances, both in these islands
and in Germany, are provided. They are sung before or during part of
the dances, and as a rule are little more than an introduction of
the performers, to whom they give distinctive names. If they contain
any incident, it is generally of the nature of a quarrel, in which
one of the dancers or one of the grotesques is killed. To this point
it will be necessary to return. The names given to the characters
are sometimes extremely nondescript; sometimes, under a more or less
literary influence, of an heroic order. Here and there a touch of
something more primitive may be detected. Five sets of verses from
the north of England are available in print. Two of these are of
Durham _provenance_. One, from Houghton-le-Spring, has, besides the
skin-clad ‘Tommy’ and the ‘Bessy,’ five dancers. These are King George,
a Squire’s Son also called Alick or Alex, a King of Sicily, Little
Foxey, and a Pitman[675]. The other Durham version has a captain called
True Blue, a Squire’s Son, Mr. Snip a tailor, a Prodigal Son (replaced
in later years by a Sailor), a Skipper, a Jolly Dog. There is only
one clown, who calls himself a ‘fool,’ and acts as treasurer. He is
named Bessy, but wears a hairy cap with a fox’s brush pendent[676].
Two other versions come from Yorkshire. At Wharfdale there are seven
dancers, Thomas the clown, his son Tom, Captain Brown, Obadiah Trim a
tailor, a Foppish Knight, Love-ale a vintner, and Bridget the clown’s
wife[677]. At Linton in Craven there are five, the clown, Nelson, Jack
Tar, Tosspot, and Miser a woman[678]. The fifth version is of unnamed
locality. It has two clowns, Tommy in skin and tail, and Bessy, and
amongst the dancers are a Squire’s Son and a Tailor[679]. Such a
nomenclature will not repay much analysis. The ‘Squire,’ whose son
figures amongst the dancers, is identical with the ‘Tommy,’ although
why he should have a son I do not know. Similarly, the ‘Bridget’ at
Wharfdale and the ‘Miser’ at Linton correspond to the ‘Bessy’ who
appears elsewhere.
The Shetland dance, so far as the names go, is far more literary
and less of a folk affair than any of the English examples. The
grotesques are absent altogether, and the dancers belong wholly to
that heroic category which is also represented in a degenerate form
at Houghton-le-Spring. They are in fact those ‘seven champions of
Christendom’--St. George of England, St. James of Spain, St. Denys of
France, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Anthony of
Italy, and St. Andrew of Scotland--whose legends were first brought
together under that designation by Richard Johnson in 1596[680].
Precisely the same divergence between a popular and a literary or
heroic type of nomenclature presents itself in such of the German
sword-dance rhymes as are in print. Three very similar versions
from Styria, Hungary, and Bohemia are traceable to a common
‘Austro-Bavarian’ archetype[681]. The names of these, so far as they
are intelligible at all, appear to be due to the village imagination,
working perhaps in one or two instances, such as ‘Grünwald’ or ‘Wilder
Waldmann,’ upon stock figures of the folk festivals[682]. It is the
heroic element, however, which predominates in the two other sets of
verses which are available. One is from the Clausthal in the Harz
mountains, and here the dancers represent the five kings of England,
Saxony, Poland, Denmark, and Moorland, together with a serving-man,
Hans, and one Schnortison, who acts as leader and treasurer of the
party[683]. In the other, from Lübeck, the dancers are the ‘worthies’
Kaiser Karl, Josua, Hector, David, Alexander, and Judas Maccabaeus.
They fight with one Sterkader, in whom Müllenhoff finds the Danish hero
Stercatherus mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus; and to the Hans of the
Clausthal corresponds a Klas Rugebart, who seems to be the red-bearded
St. Nicholas[684].
In view of the wide range of the sword-dance in Germany, I do not think
it is necessary to attach any importance to the theories advanced by
Sir Walter Scott and others that it is, in England and Scotland, of
Scandinavian origin. It is true that it appears to be found mainly
in those parts of these islands where the influence of Danes and
Northmen may be conjectured to have been strongest. But I believe that
this is a matter of appearance merely, and that a type of folk-dance
far more widely spread in the south of England than the sword-dance
proper, is really identical with it. This is the morris-dance, the
chief characteristic of which is that the performers wear bells which
jingle at every step. Judging by the evidence of account-books, as
well as by the allusions of contemporary writers, the morris was
remarkably popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries[685].
Frequently, but by no means always, it is mentioned in company with the
May-game[686]. In a certain painted window at Betley in Staffordshire
are represented six morris-dancers, together with a May-pole, a
musician, a fool, a crowned man on a hobby-horse, a crowned lady
with a pink in her hand, and a friar. The last three may reasonably
be regarded as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck[687]. The
closeness of the relation between the morris-dance and the May-game
is, however, often exaggerated. The Betley figures only accompany
the morris-dance; they do not themselves wear the bells. And besides
the window, the only trace of evidence that any member of the Robin
Hood _cortège_, with the exception of Maid Marian, was essential to
the morris-dance, is a passage in a masque of Ben Jonson’s, which so
seems to regard the friar[688]. The fact is that the morris-dance was
a great deal older, as an element in the May-game, than Robin Hood,
and that when Robin Hood’s name was forgotten in this connexion, the
morris-dance continued to be in vogue, not at May-games only, but at
every form of rustic merry-making. On the other hand, it is true that
the actual dancers were generally accompanied by grotesque personages,
and that one of these was a woman, or a man dressed in woman’s clothes,
to whom literary writers at least continued to give the name of Maid
Marian. The others have nothing whatever to do with Robin Hood. They
were a clown or fool, and a hobby-horse, who, if the evidence of an
Elizabethan song can be trusted, was already beginning to go out of
fashion[689]. A rarer feature was a dragon, and it is possible that,
when there was a dragon, the rider of the hobby-horse was supposed to
personate St. George[690]. The morris-dance is by no means extinct,
especially in the north and midlands. Accounts of it are available
from Lancashire and Cheshire[691], Derbyshire[692], Shropshire[693],
Leicestershire[694], and Oxfordshire[695]; and there are many other
counties in which it makes, or has recently made, an appearance[696].
The hobby-horse, it would seem, is now at last, except in Derbyshire,
finally ‘forgot’; but the two other traditional grotesques are still
_de rigueur_. Few morris-dances are complete without the ‘fool’ or
clown, amongst whose various names that of ‘squire’ in Oxfordshire and
that of ‘dirty Bet’ in Lancashire are the most interesting. The woman
is less invariable. Her Tudor name of Maid Marian is preserved in
Leicestershire alone; elsewhere she appears as a shepherdess, or Eve,
or ‘the fool’s wife’; and sometimes she is merged with the ‘fool’ into
a single nondescript personage.
The morris-dance is by no means confined to England. There are
records of it from Scotland[697], Germany[698], Flanders[699],
Switzerland[700], Italy[701], Spain[702], and France[703]. In the
last-named country Tabourot described it about 1588 under the name of
_morisque_[704], and the earlier English writers call it the _morisce_,
_morisk_, or _morisco_[705]. This seems to imply a derivation of the
name at least from the Spanish _morisco_, a Moor. The dance itself
has consequently been held to be of Moorish origin, and the habit
of blackening the face has been considered as a proof of this[706].
Such a theory seems to invert the order of facts. The dance is too
closely bound up with English village custom to be lightly regarded
as a foreign importation; and I would suggest that the faces were
not blackened, because the dancers represented Moors, but rather the
dancers were thought to represent Moors, because their faces were
blackened. The blackened face is common enough in the village festival.
Hence, as we have seen, May-day became proper to the chimney-sweeps,
and we have found a conjectural reason for the disguise in the
primitive custom of smearing the face with the beneficent ashes of
the festival fire[707]. Blackened faces are known in the sword-dance
as well as in the morris-dance[708]; and there are other reasons
which make it probable that the two are only variants of the same
performance. Tabourot, it is true, distinguishes _les bouffons_, or
the sword-dance, and _le morisque_; but then Tabourot is dealing
with the sophisticated versions of the folk-dances used in society,
and Cotgrave, translating _les buffons_, can find no better English
term than _morris_ for the purpose[709]. The two dances appear at
the same festivals, and they have the same grotesques; for the Tommy
and Bessy of the English sword-dance, who occasionally merge in one,
are obviously identical with the Maid Marian and the ‘fool’ of the
morris-dance, who also nowadays similarly coalesce. There are traces,
too, of an association of the hobby-horse with the sword-dance, as well
as with the morris-dance[710]. Most conclusive of all, however, is the
fact that in Oxfordshire and in Shropshire the morris-dancers still
use swords or wooden staves which obviously represent swords, and that
the performers of the elaborate Revesby sword-dance or play, to be
hereafter described, are called in the eighteenth-century manuscript
‘morrice dancers[711].’ I do not think that the floating handkerchiefs
of the morris-dance are found in its congener, nor do I know what,
if any, significance they have. Probably, like the ribbons, they
merely represent rustic notions of ornament. Müllenhoff lays stress
on the white shirts or smocks which he finds almost universal in the
sword-dance[712]. The morris-dancers are often described as dressed in
white; but here too, if the ordinary work-a-day costume is a smock,
the festal costume is naturally a clean white smock. Finally, there
are the bells. These, though they have partially disappeared in the
north, seem to be proper to the morris-dance, and to differentiate
it from the sword-dance[713]. But this is only so when the English
examples are alone taken into consideration, for Müllenhoff quotes
one Spanish and three German descriptions of sword-dances in which
the bells are a feature[714]. Tabourot affords similar evidence for
the French version[715]; while Olaus Magnus supplements his account
of the Scandinavian sword-dance with one of a similar performance, in
which the swords were replaced by bows, and bells were added[716]. The
object of the bells was probably to increase or preserve the musical
effect of the clashing swords. The performers known to Tacitus were
_nudi_, and no bells are mentioned. One other point with regard to
the morris-dance is worth noticing before we leave the subject. It
is capable of use both as a stationary and a processional dance, and
therefore illustrates both of the two types of dancing motion naturally
evolved from the circumstances of the village festival[717].
Müllenhoff regards the sword-dance as primarily a rhythmic _Abbild_ or
mimic representation of war, subsequently modified in character by use
at the village feasts[718]. It is true that the notice of Tacitus and
the allusion in _Beowulf_ suggest that it had a military character; and
it may fairly be inferred that it formed part of that war-cult from
which, as pointed out in a previous chapter, heroic poetry sprang. This
is confirmed by the fact that some at least of the _dramatis personae_
of the modern dances belong to the heroic category. Side by side with
local types such as the Pitman or the Sailor, and with doublets of
the grotesques such as Little Foxey or the Squire’s Son[719], appear
the five kings of the Clausthal dance, the ‘worthies’ of the Lübeck
dance, and the ‘champions of Christendom’ of the Shetland dance.
These particular groups betray a Renaissance rather than a mediaeval
imagination; as with the morris-dance of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_,
the village schoolmaster, Holophernes or another, has probably been
at work upon them[720]. Some of the heterogeneous English _dramatis
personae_, Nelson for instance, testify to a still later origin. On the
other hand, the Sterkader or Stercatherus of the Lübeck dance suggests
that genuine national heroes were occasionally celebrated in this
fashion. At the same time I do not believe, with Müllenhoff, that the
sword-dance originated in the war-cult. Its essentially agricultural
character seems to be shown by the grotesques traditionally associated
with it, the man in woman’s clothes, the skin or tail-wearing clown and
the hobby-horse, all of which seem to find their natural explanation
in the facts of agricultural worship[721]. Again, the dance makes its
appearance, not like heroic poetry in general as part of the minstrel
repertory, but as a purely popular thing at the agricultural festivals.
To these festivals, therefore, we may reasonably suppose it to have
originally belonged, and to have been borrowed from them by the young
warriors who danced before the king. They, however, perhaps gave it the
heroic element which, in its turn, drifted into the popular versions.
We have already seen that popular heroic _cantilenae_ existed together
with those of minstrelsy up to a late date. Nor does Müllenhoff’s view
find much support from the classical sword-dances which he adduces. As
to the origin of the _lusus Troiae_ or Pyrrhic dance which the Romans
adopted from Doric Greece, I can say nothing[722]; but the native
Italian dance of the _Salii_ or priests of Mars in March and October is
clearly agricultural. It belongs to the cult of Mars, not as war-god,
but in his more primitive quality of a fertilization spirit[723].
Further, I believe that the use of swords in the dance was not
martial at all; their object was to suggest not a fight, but a mock
or symbolical sacrifice. Several of the dances include figures in
which the swords are brought together in a significant manner about
the person of one or more of the dancers. Thus in the Scandinavian
dance described by Olaus Magnus, a _quadrata rosa_ of swords is placed
on the head of each performer. A precisely similar figure occurs in
the Shetland and in a variety of the Yorkshire dances[724]. In the
Siebenbürgen dances there are two figures in which the performers
pretend to cut at each other’s heads or feet, and a third in which one
of them has the swords put in a ring round his neck[725]. This latter
evolution occurs also in a variety of the Yorkshire dance[726] and in
a Spanish one described by Müllenhoff after a seventeenth-century
writer. And here the figure has the significant name of _la degollada_,
‘the beheading[727].’