Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/52

 38 "November, 1901. "I have given my party. Fifty people attended, thirty-eight of them 'grown-ups.' It began at 7.30 and ended at 2.15 a.m., starting with a trifle of 165 verses about a certain 'Earl of Engelland' and his two sons. You could have heard my party half a mile, and it was supposed to be a very fine entertainment. We had coffee, Jul-kage, Scotch biscuits, tobacco, cigars, and sweets, and I doubt if any other church-capital ever gave a dance to all the youth of the city for the sum of fourteen shillings! The gentlemen all wore their hats, and most of them neck-mufflers. ' Kissing games ' followed from i o'clock to 2.15, and there was one very pretty figure-dance, when twenty of the gentlemen's garters were used. Altogether it was a great success."

"Nov. 23rd, 1902.

"I wish you could have attended a large wedding in that I saw last week. It lasted 50 hours, and dancing went on about 46 hours out of the fifty. I saw one great-grandfather, grandfather to the bride, dancing vigorously the old Danish ballad ' There lived two Earls in Engelland,' 165 verses long. He was 86 years old. Most of the dance ballads were old Danish kempeviser, but there were also Far6sk ones,—The Long Serpent, Sigmund's ballad, Jakoba Mon, one of the Charlemagne ballads, and perhaps eight or nine more during the whole time of dancing."

In another letter the writer states that the dances cease during the season of Lent.

The Roman Mission under Augustine introduced the veneration of the Apostles. The names of St. Peter, St. Andrew, etc., with the local Roman saints Gregory and Lawrence, mark their foundations. St. Mary and All Saints are of every date and school. The Celtic Church revered its own holy men, as we see to this day both in the dedications and the place-names of Wales and Cornwall. The Anglo-Saxon Church, later, followed to some extent in its steps, and commemorated,—(to mention only a few),—St. Cuthbert and St. Chad, St. Hilda, St. Edith, and St. Mildred. St. Leonard, protector of captives, and St. Giles, patron of cripples, the