Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/53

Rh (on New Year, and Twelft-day) call'd the Hobby-horse dance, from a person that carryed the image of a horse between his leggs, made of thin boards, and in his hand a bow and arrow, which passing through a hole in the bow, and stopping upon a sholder it had in it, he made a snapping noise as he drew it to and fro, keeping time with the Musick: with this Man danced 6 others, carrying on their shoulders as many Rain deers heads, 3 of them painted white, and 3 red, with the Armes of the cheif families (viz. of Paget, Bagot, and Wells) to whom the revenews of the Town cheifly belonged, depicted on the palms of them, with which they danced the Hays, and other Country dances. To this Hobby-horse dance there also belong'd a pot, which was kept by turnes, by 4 or 5 of the cheif of the Town, whom they call'd Reeves, who provided Cakes and Ale to put in this pot; all people who had any kindness for the good intent of the Institution of the sport, giving pence a piece for themselves and families; and so forraigners too, that came to see it: with which Mony (the charge of the Cakes and Ale being defrayed) they not only repaired their Church but kept their poore too: which charges are not now perhaps so cheerfully boarn" (Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, p. 434, ch. x., par. 66).

This suggests that the Horn-dance, with other such sports, had been discontinued under the Commonwealth. If it had been already revived in 1686, Dr. Plot had not heard of it. When I visited the place in the early nineties, the then vicar, who showed me the horns, told me that he was informed that the dance was formerly performed in the churchyard, after service, on three successive Sundays at Christmas time. Whether these were the Sundays between the dedication-day, Dec. 6th, and Christmas Day, or whether they were the Sundays in Christmas-tide, with Christmas Day itself, I cannot say, nor when the dance was removed (or restored?) to the fair-day. Miss Mary Bagot, daughter of the Rev. Walter Bagot, rector of the adjoining parish of Blithfield, wrote in 1817 of the local Christmas sports in the last years of the eighteenth century,—"a party from Abbot's Bromley came once, and must, I think, have performed Maid Marian's dance, from the faint recollection I have of it" (Links with the Past, p. 190). The cross-bow man, who still makes the