1915.] 



THE CHEVAUCHEE DE ST. MICHEL. 251 



ance of the King's Highway. A little deeper down we come to 

 the feasting and the dancing at various points, all originally 

 connected with boundary stones, along the route. 



No actual record of the dances danced at the Chevauchee has 

 come down to us, but the one traditional dance connected with 

 all our old festivals and merry makings has always been the 

 one known as " A mon beau Laurier." where the dancers join 

 hands and whirl round, curtsey, and kiss a central object — in 

 the later days either a man or a woman — but perhaps originally 

 either a sacred stone or a primeval altar, or indeed a symbolic 

 deity, waiting (in the person of the victim) to be sacrificed at 

 the conclusion of the dance. 



It is worth noting that each of these halting places was 

 consecrated in later days either by a wayside cross or a Christian 

 Church, for the earliest missionaries invariably raised the 

 symbols of their worship on spots already consecrated to earlier 

 divinities. From the fact that our first missionaries seem to 

 have settled at the Vale and St. Sampson's and there built the 

 earliest of our chapels, it is probable that this end of island was 

 the centre of the primitive population, and therefore the first 

 to be cultivated. That the Chevauchee was an agricultural 

 festival in one of its origins is evident from its route — which 

 was practically all inland — and its traditional colours of red, 

 white and black, colours which are those associated with the 

 earth but never with the sea. 



The kissing, which was the recognised privilege of the 

 pions — and is the only evidence we have of the participation of 

 women in the original rite — seems to point to a survival of 

 some of the old orgiastic spring festivals which were conducive 

 to the fertility and therefore to the prosperity of the flocks and 

 herds of primitive man.* 1 * Thus it was a festival of life and not 

 of death, the dolmens, the abodes of the dead, were left unvi- 

 sited or passed unnoticed, for it was the month of May, of 

 awakening life, when all Northern Nations tried to propitiate 

 their deities into granting them good crops and fertile herds. 

 From what stratum of symbolic ritual the rolling in of the 

 stone at the door of Les Jenemies was derived it is impossible 

 for me to say. But I think it is certain that the original festival 

 was essentially a religious one, and this explains why the 

 Church, in the persons of the Abbots of Mont St. Michel, took 

 it under its especial patronage. And it is possible that it was 

 under their auspices that the mounted officials were introduced, 

 possibly as substitutes for the priestly leaders of an earlier day. 

 Thus in process of time they insensibly transformed what was 

 probably an orgiastic festival, marching in all the bravery of 

 priestly magnificence to the shrines of ancient deities, into a 

 formal procession held under the segis of Church and State, for 

 the purpose of ridding the King's highway of local obstructions. 

 (1) The custom at Jerbourg was probably another fertility charm. 



