Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/87

Rh INTRODUCTION. Ixxxi were riddle-ballads,^ a series of wishes for things quite impossible to attain, monstrous and emulative falsehoods, strife between winter and summer,* the dialogue of two lovers, one without and one within the house, and actual hymns. In short, any doing of man, — quidquid agunt homines, — so it went to metre, was welcome for the dance. Dramatic action was common enough, for the story was made present and belonged to every singer ; and graceful gestures, survival of the older mimicry, were still in vogue for the vanishing Sir Roger de Coverley within memory of living men. Indeed, a temerarious but catholic taste seems to have led folk to play ball along with their dancing, — as if your modern base-runner should " come home in a coranto " ; and one hears of a gay dame leading some medieval dance, who in the midst of her singing and her winding steps was most regret- tably hit on the head and killed by a bat (boiuius) which slipped from some man's hand.'' The German Neidhart, who has so much to say about peasants' dancing, mentions a gay-colored ball, seemingly as part of the outfit ; while there is distinct tripping of metre, if not of steps, in those dactyls of Walther von der Vogelweide : 1 See ChUd, Ballads, I, i ff. 2 Uhland, Volkslieder, I, 23. — Bohme, Altdeutsches Liederbuch, gives a number of the more or less erotic dances. " awful example " is from a medieval sermon (often quoted : Schultz, Das hbfische Leben zur Zeit d. Minnesinger^ I, 541, who gives ample material for medieval ball-playing ; and Uhland, Schriften, III, 477, note) against such follies as dancing, and may incidentally explain Edward I IPs action in forbidding hand-ball, foot-ball, and club-ball to English youth (Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, Introduction, section xxxvii). In the ballads. Sir Hugh seems to have been playing foot-ball, a formidable punter for his tender years ; the Earl of Murray played at ba* not specified ; and the four and twenty ladies in " Childe Waters," and i!l " Tam Lin," were probably tossing and catching. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Probably dancers and ball-players were crowded together. This