Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/94

84 where they are arranged in rows or groups, the schoolboys and schoolgirls being in charge of their respective teachers, as if they were going on a picnic. At a given signal the musicians strike up the lively tune known as "Willibrord's Dance," and the saltatory movement begins, the whole mass moving three or four steps forward and one or two steps backward, or four steps to the right and the same number to the left in a diagonal direction, thus advancing, as it were, on the hypothenuse instead of on the perpendicular of a triangle. From a distance, the bobbing and swaying throng resembles the swell and fall of a restless sea, or the bubbling of boiling water in an immense caldron. In this manner the procession moves on for more than two hours through the streets of the town and up the sixty-two steps leading to the parish church, where the dance is kept up for some time around the tomb of St. Willibrord. The dancers join hands, or more frequently hold together by means of a handkerchief, for the sake of greater freedom of motion. Here and there an old man may be seen dragging along an infirm son, who makes desperate attempts to leap with the rest, or a stout woman gasping and sweating under the heavy burden of a paralytic daughter, whom she bears in her arms as she bounds to and fro.

Many legends are afloat concerning the origin of this custom. Thus it is said that in the latter half of the eighth century a sort of epizoötic chorea broke out in the region round about Echternach, and caused all the horses, cows, sheep, and goats to dance in their stalls and to refuse to eat. As no medicine gave relief, the people made a vow that they would dance round the grave of St. Willibrord, and no sooner was this vow fulfilled than the plague ceased, apparently in accordance with the homœopathic principle—saltus saltibus curantur. Another tradition connects it with the pestilence known as the black death, which prevailed about the middle of the fourteenth century. In all probability, however, it is a survival of the old pagan feast which was celebrated at the summer solstice in honor of the sun, and changed by Willibrord into a Christian festival. This policy of adopting heathen observances that could not be easily abolished was urged by Pope Gregory the Great as early as the sixth century, in his famous letter to the Benedictine Augustine, first Bishop of Canterbury, and followed by Boniface, Willibrord, and all the other Anglo-Saxon missionaries to the German tribes. It was due to this prudent spirit of compromise that the feast of Ostara, the German goddess of spring, was transformed into Easter, and the nativity of John the Baptist, the herald of the Sun of Righteousness, was placed on June 24th, so as to correspond with the pagan festivities of midsummer.

In Italy the belief in the baneful power of "the evil eye," or