Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/389

Rh Pickle Herring [one of the characters] stamps with his foot, and the Fool rises on his knees again.” A little more parleying, and “Then the Dancers, putting their swords round the Fool’s neck again,” the Fool proceeds to make further absurd bequests. The same kind of thing is repeated, with scraps of song and dialogue between the placing of swords about the Fool and the threats that he is to die. This action, taken in connection with the title of the piece, “The Plow Boys or Morris Dancers,” establishes it as a Teutonic tradition—a Lincolnshire variant of the combination of the sword-dance with the “Fool Plough” festival which was peculiar to the northern counties—as the following passage from Grimm will show:—

In this case, perhaps, the importance of the action of the piece is so clear that it need not be insisted upon. But in all folk-drama it is the same. What is of first consequence is the action and the characters represented; the