Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/353

Rh regulated their affairs. During the winter they would meet regularly in some barn to practise together. There was great rivalry between the dancers of different villages, and bands often met together to have competitions in combined and solo dancing, a prize being given by some local magnate. On one occasion some forty-three years ago, dancers from five different villages met at Minster Lovel to decide their supremacy, when Leafield was victorious. These contests, tho' friendly enough at first, often ended, after a drinking bout, in a free-fight, in which the sticks carried by the dancers were answerable for not a few broken heads. Most bands of dancers went on tour to different villages round their own, during and after their feasts, returning to their own villages at night. Encroachment on the district danced over by another band was bitterly resented, and often caused battles. Many of the dancers would go up to London and the south to work at the early hay harvest, and tramp northwards for the later harvest at home. During this tour they would give exhibitions of dancing, and so increase their harvest wages. The music was always supplied by the pipe and tabour, or, as it was more generally called, the "whittle-and-dub." I know of no one now living who can play these instruments, and it is to be feared that the traditional style is lost.

The pipe or "whittle" (pl. vii., Nos. 3, 4) is of wood ; of the two in my possession one is 11½ inches, the other 12 inches long. They have a mouthpiece like a whistle, with a tongue of metal in the upper opening. The other end is quite open. At a distance of l½ or 2 inches from the open end, in the upper side is a hole for fingering, with a second hole one inch nearer the mouthpiece. On the under side is a hole for thumbing, about 3½ inches from the open end. The tabour or "dub" (pl. vii., Nos. 1, 2) is about 9¼ inches in diameter, and 3 inches in depth. It consists of: