Page:Popular Music of the Olden Time, Volume 1.pdf/187



The Cushion Dance was in favour both in court and country in the reign of Elizabeth, and is occasionally danced even at the present day. In Lilly’s Euphues, 1580, Lucilla, says, “Trulie, Euphues, you have mist the cushion, for I was neither angrie with your long absence, neither am I well pleased at your presence.” This is, perhaps, in allusion to the dance, in which each woman selected her partner by placing the cushion before him. Taylor, the water-poet, calls it “a pretty little provocatory dance,” for he before whom the cushion was placed, was to kneel and salute the lady. In Heywood’s A Woman kill’d with Kindness, (which Henslow mentions in his diary, in 1602), the dances which the country people call for are, Rogero; The Beginning of the World, or Sellenger's Round; John, come kiss me now; Tom Tyler; The hunting of the Fox; The Hay; Put on your smock a Monday; and The Cushion Dance; and Sir Francis thus describes their style of dancing:—

When a partner was selected in the dance, he, or she, sang “Prinkum-prankum is a fine dance,” &amp;c.; which line is quoted by Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy; and, “No dance is lawful but Prinkum-prankum,” in The Muses’ Looking-glass, 1638.

In the Apothegms of King James, the Earl of Worcester, &c., 1658, a wedding