time: the refreshing river 



says that the poHce, who were apparently unable to distinguish between 

 a folk-song and a "rough house," exerted themselves about 1900 to 

 forbid all singing in inns and public-houses. In the future, its dis- 

 appearance may be one of the prices we shall have to pay for a more 

 general happiness and well-being. But we may reflect that v/hen the 

 oppression of man by man has been liquidated, a certain number of 

 fundamental limitations will still remain. Inhabitants of space and 

 time, subject still to the oppression of mortality, men will surely 

 still be able to create and appreciate the kind of art-productions — for 

 such they are, however communal and however artless — which we 

 know as folk-songs.^ 



The folk-dance, too, has interest both for the archaeologist, since 

 it is found in association with many different rites, often undoubtedly 

 the late survivals of pre-christian festivals; and also for the amateur 

 of dancing, since in many cases it is skilled and beautiful in the 

 highest degree.^ But even here we cannot fail to note the same socio- 

 logical factor. The seasonal festival was a recognised means of escape 

 from the state of subjection in which the peasant normally lived. 

 "We daren't come out but on Plough Monday," an East Anglian 

 dancer said to me once, "they'd have the law on us if we ploughed 

 up a doorstep, but on that day they can't touch us, because it's an 

 old charter." Unfortunately, even this was often denied. In 1816 the 

 ringleader of a gang of "plough-bullocks" was severely reprimanded 

 and fined before a magistrate before whom he was brought. "These 

 men had a notion that they had a privileged right on certain days in 

 spring, to exact donations from respectable residents, and in default 

 of payment to damage their premises." The authentic bourgeois tone. 

 The two great theophanies of the bourgeois, the Puritan and the 

 Business Man, both hated the Morris, the Maypole, the Plough-Stots, 

 and the Mummers. They wanted to make the world safe for the 

 profit of godly industry, and they succeeded, although with time, it 

 became, as we have observed, much less godly and distinctly more 

 profitable. 



In the socialist state of the future, as in the Soviet Union to-day, 

 the traditional ritual dances of the people will be treasured indeed. 

 They are the pure creations of the working-class, and they will 



^ The justice of this belief is strongly reinforced by the interesting article of 

 M. Azadovsky on the present position of folk-songs in the Soviet Union {Lenin 

 Commemoration Volume, Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1934). 



^ Cf. my monograph "Geographical Distribution of English Ceremonial Folk- 

 Dances" in Joum. Eng. Folk Dance and Song Soc, 1936,3, i. 



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