By the Rev. Chr. Wordsworth. 289 



and American developments — the danoing instinct has been 

 noticeably present from time to time in religious worship or in 

 connexion with local celebration of some festival. Mr. E. K. 

 Cliambers, The Mcdimval Stage, two vols., Clarendon Press, 1903, 

 has collected some curious information (pp. 161, 198), and Herder 

 and Bromel may be consulted. The custom of dancing in Church 

 is said to have been stopped in France about the eleventh century. 

 (H. J. Gauntlett, in ISI. & Q., 2 S., iv., 35.) Edmund Martene, 

 about 1699, speaks of singing and dancing in the Church or Cathe- 

 dral yards, or some adjacent meadow, in days gone by after evensong 

 on Whitsun-day,^ which brings me to the second point — the point 

 of time. 



festas of the little chapels in Teneriffe there is dancing in the chapels. Cor- 

 respondents in N. & Q., 3 S., xi. , mention the Indians dancing, with music, 

 before the altar of the Greek Church in a certain town (not named) in 

 Mexico, p. 207, " T.F." was told it was not uncommon in other towns. (He 

 does not say how there came to be a Greek Church there. Possibly, for 

 some merchants; and in Calabria pifferari with their bagpipes before out- 

 door shrines, p. 392. W. J. Bernhard Smith (p. 244) recalls the charming 

 passage in the apochryphal Protevangelion (c. 8), where it is said that St. 

 Mary in her babyhood, at the age of 3 years, was placed with her little 

 lamp in her hand upon the third step of the altar in Jerusalem, " and the 

 Lord gave unto her grace, and she danced with her feet, and all the house 

 of Israel loved her." W. Hone, Apocr. N. T., p. 28. See also W. J. Thoms 

 Anecd. and Traditions, Camd. Soc, 81. 



See also Hone's Every Dai/ Book, i., 1594-5, where the bagpipes, though 

 not the dancers, are depicted. 



An interesting account of the Dance of the Seises, at Seville, with an illus- 

 tration and music, is given by 0. and H. Vivian, Romance of Heligion, 1902, 

 pp. 16—30. In A. T. Quiller-Couch's Mayor of Troy (ch. iii.), " The Vicar 

 of Troy .... matched Helleston's May-Dance [on May 8th] with at 

 least a score of similar May-Day observances in different towns and villages 

 in Cornwall. He quoted the Padstow Hobby-horse, the Towedneck Cuckoo- 

 feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy [? Fowey] May-dragon, and proved 

 that the custom of ushering in the summer with song and dance and some 

 symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universal throughout Cornwall. 

 He followed the custom overseas to Brittany, Hungary, the Black Forest, 

 Moldavia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Caucasus." 



' On Whitsunday " in quibusdam ecclesiis olim fiebant post vesperas in 

 pratello choreae, ut in Lemovicensi (Limoges). De hujusmodi chorea hec 

 leguntur in Ordinario Cabilonensi (C/i«Zon*-.sMr-)S'«one). Post completorium 

 fit chorus in prato. Decanus cantionem primam Veni Creator Spiritus. 

 Ceteri suam dieant, qui voluerint, latine tamen." Martene, Ant. Eecl. 

 Sit., iv., 28, 18 (t. iii., p. 195). 



