Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/110

102 Spaniards around him, and, with these, an account of his visit to a small Spanish town on the feast-day of the patron saint. After alluding to a procession of priests, with relics, &c., he says: "We entered upon a tour of observation, and it was not long before our trouble was rewarded, and our curiosity gratified, with the sight of a dance, performed by six men, each of whom held one of the knotted ends of a coloured handkerchief, the other knot being held by another dancer. To the horridly monotonous whifflings of two reed-pipes, and the sound of a species of tom-tom, they curveted round and round, or changed places, and, in doing so, altered the variegated pattern formed by the handkerchiefs—six in all—ever held head-high, and kept twining and intertwining in multiform ways. The tom-tom consisted of an earthen bowl, over the mouth of which a bladder was tightly strained. Through the centre of the skin a stout quill, plucked from a turkey, was thrust, and this being drawn out and pushed in again produced a horrid monotone, not unlike the booming of a bull frog. It was a strangely unique performance."

There can be no doubt that the dance thus described is identical in its main points with the English Morris, or Morisco, dancing; and interesting in support of the assertion that this dance was first introduced into Spain by the Moors, and thence into England. It is also interesting in showing not only the rapid decline of the Morris dance in England, but also the knowledge of it; as this author, evidently an observer, does not appear to have any, although within the last three hundred years this was a chief amusement of the higher classes (even royalty itself), and, up to a very recent period, the national dance of the rural districts.

Many particulars are given in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, and in Brand's Popular Antiquities, from churchwardens' accounts, and other sources, showing the popularity of this amusement in the public payments in support of it, but I have no knowledge of any printed description of the dance by which it might be recognised. Under these circumstances, perhaps the following may be worthy of publication.

So long as Morris dancing was kept up with spirit, i. e., to about 1830 or 1840, there was a sort of rivalry in parishes as to which