518 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 61. 



dances about the room with a cushion in his hand, 

 and at the end of the tune stops and sings : 

 " This dance it will no further go I " 



[ The musician answers.'] 

 " I pray you, good sir, why say you so ?" 



{Man.] 



" Because Joan Sanderson will not come to ! " 



\_Music.] 



" She must come to, and she shall come to, 

 And she must come whither she will or no." 



He now lays down the cushion before a woman, 

 on which slie kneels, and he kisses her, singing : 

 " Welcome, Joan Sandei-son, welcome, welcome." 



She rises with the cushion, and both dance about, 

 singing : 



" Prinkuiii-prankiim is a fine dance, 

 And shall we go dance it once again, 



And once again. 

 And shall we go dance it once again ? " 



Then making a stop, the woman sings, as before: 

 " This dance it will no further go." 



[Music] 

 " T pray yon, madam, why say you so ? " 



[ Womun.] 

 " Because John Sanderson will not come to." 



\_Music.] 

 " He must come to," &c. 

 And so she lays down the cushion before a man, 

 who, kneeling upon it, salutes her, she singing : 

 " Welcome, John Sanderson," &c. 



Then, he taking up the cushion, they take 

 hands, and dnnce round, singing as before : and 

 this they do till the whole company is taken into 

 the ring. Then the cushion is laid down before 

 the first man, tlie woman singing- " This dance," &c. 

 (as before), only instead of " Come to," they sing 

 "Go fro;" and instead of "Welcome, John San- 

 derson," &c., they sing " Farewell, John Sander- 

 son, farewell," &c.: and so tl.ey go out, one by 

 one, as they came in. This dance was at one time 

 Jiighly popular, both at court and in the cottage, 

 in the latter of which, in some remote country 

 villages, it is still danced. Selden, in his Tulle 

 Talk, thus refers to it : 



" The court of iinglai.d is much altered. At a solemn 

 dancing, first you have the grave measures, then the 

 CoTvantoes and the Guliiards, and this is kept up with 

 ceremony, at length to TrLnchmore and the Cushion 

 dance ; and then all the company dance, lord and groom, 

 lady and kitchen-maid, no distinction. (Would our fair 

 Beigravians of 1850 condescend to d.ince with tluir 

 kitchen-maids?) So in our court in Queen Elizabeth's 

 time, gravity and state were kc))! up. In King James's 

 time, things were pretty well. But in King Charles's 

 time there has been nothing but Trenehmore and the 

 Cushion dance," &c. 



I shall also feel obliged for the date of Bab at 

 the Bowster, or Bab in the Bowster, as it is called 

 in Scotland. Jainieson, in his Dictiona?'!/, de- 

 scribes it as a very old Scottish dance, and gene- 

 rally the last danced at weddings and merry- 

 makings. It is now danced with a handkerchief 

 in place of a cushion ; and no words are used. 

 That a rhyme was formerly used, there is little 

 doubt. Query, What were the words of this 

 rhyme ? Mac. 



Charminster. 



DID BCNTAN KNOW HOBBES f 



I observe a querist wishes to know the artist of 

 the portrait of Biuiyan prefixed to his works. I 

 can only myself conjecture Cooper, the miniature 

 painter, but I am also curious about the great 

 author of The Pilgrim's Progress. 



First, is Bunyan really the author of " Heart's 

 Ease in Heart's Trouble," and the " Visions of 

 Heaven and Hell," piiblisiied in his works, and 

 j)erhaps, excepting " Grace Abounding," the most 

 popular of his received miscellanies ? I think not. 

 Rly reasons are these. The style is very different, 

 and much poorer than his best works. In the 

 " Progress," wlien he quotes Latin, he modestly 

 puts a side-note [The Latin that I borroui]. In 

 the two tracts mentioned he flashes out a bit of 

 Latin two or three times where he might have 

 much better tised English, or in a superfluous way. 

 Also it is curious to know that in his " Visions of 

 Hell" he meets Leviathan Hobbes, the philosopher 

 of Malmesbury. The passage is curious, for if 

 true, and written by Bunyan, it proves him to 

 be personally acquainted with Hobbes. I extract 

 it. After hearing his name calle<l out, Epenetus 

 (the author and visitant of the infernal regions) 

 naturally inquires who it is that calls him. He is 

 answered, — 



" I was once well acquainted with you on earth, and 

 had almost persuaded you to be of my Dpinion. I am 

 the author of that celebrated book, so well known by 

 the title of Leviathan I 



"'What! the great Hobbes,' said I, 'are you 

 come liither ? Your voice is so much changed, I did not 

 know it.' " 



The dialogue which ensues is not worth quoting, 

 as it is from our purpose. But I would ask when 

 was the time when Bunyan " was nearly persuaded 

 to be of Hobbes' opinion ? " If he is the author 

 and speaks the truth (and he is notoriously truth- 

 ful), it must have been in early youth ; but surely 

 the philosopher of Malmesbury could not know an 

 obscure tinker. Bunyan cannot speak meta- 

 phorically, for he had not read the Leviathan, 

 since he mentions that his only reading in early 

 life, ). e. when he was likely to have embraced 

 freethinking, was the Practice of Piety, and the 

 Plain Mans Pathtcay to Heaven, his wife's dowry. 



