SWEET HOUR OF PRAYER : NORTHERN FRANCE 



The country that closed its churches during the French Revolution has never been entirely 

 without a rural folk with as pure a faith as the world affords 



march out into the street by couples, and 

 often enjoy a dance in front of the ca- 

 thedral or church where the religious 

 ceremony has taken place ; and the music 

 is furnished, of all things, by the bag- 

 pipes. The Breton has a more euphoni- 

 ous name for that instrument of torture. 

 He calls it the binious, but it sounds quite 

 as villainous when it skirls as any Scot 

 pipe ever can. 



After the dance m the street, when 

 there is one, the procession forms again, 

 led by the pipers, and goes merrily off to 

 the home of the bride for a wedding 

 feast ; but, before they enter, the guests 

 shake up a very satisfactory appetite in 

 a dance curiously like the Catalan Sar- 

 danas as it is still seen in Barcelona, 

 Spain. 



A BRETON WEDDING DANCE 



With the pipers, smock-frocked and 

 beribboned, standing in the rear, the wed- 



ding guests join hands, with the bride 

 and groom in a huge circle, and begin to 

 sway about in an interesting sort of 

 adults' ring-around-a-rosy. The steps are 

 very complicated, each dancer not only 

 moving about the periphery of the circle, 

 but also executing a solo dance of an ex- 

 ceedingly lively cadence as he does so. 

 The effect is very pleasing. Investigation 

 developed the fact that the dance is be- 

 lieved to have had a Druid origin as a 

 ceremonial thanksgiving, which, in the 

 course of centuries, came to be used as 

 an hymeneal dance only. 



Another occasion for their gathering, 

 the cattle market, is no butterfly affair, 

 and though the men wear rusty old shovel 

 hats with twin tails, the clothing of both 

 men and women is of coarse, heavy cloth, 

 and the women wear plain white caps. 

 My observation is that the cattle fairs are 

 more social than commercial. They are 



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