Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/257

Rh oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied to the tip of his horns."

The decline of such pastimes and games in England would appear to be due to the Puritans. In 1618 King James I. issued an edict in consequence of what he saw in his progress through Lancashire, "rebuking certain Puritanes and precise people in prohibiting and unlawfully punishing of our good people for using their lawful recreations and honest exercises on Sundays and other holy days after the afternoon sermon or service. It is our will that after the end of divine service our good people be not disturbed ..... from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, nor having of May games, morris dances, and the setting up of maypoles."

Charles the First renewed this proclamation in the eighth year of his reign. A pamphlet written by a High Churchman more than three years later, in answer to some attacks made upon this ordinance of Charles, by the Puritanical party, suggests "that those recreations are meetest to be used which give the best refreshment to the bodie, and leave the least impression on the minde: shooting, leaping, and the like, are rather to be chosen than diceing or carding."

In certain parts of France maypoles are still in use. The traveller who chances to be going from Bordeaux to Nantes, or vice versa, during the month of May cannot fail to remark in almost every village on his route, tall poles decked with coloured streamers, and garlands of flowers, which had been used recently, still hanging on to them.

Another dance given at Belgaum on the same occasion may be styled the club-dance: every performer holds a short staff in each hand, and flying in and out amongst his companions, with the club in his right hand, he strikes one belonging to a neighbour, and with that in his left hand he hits the club of another dancer; all keep the most perfect time; their movements are made with remarkable precision, though they are so rapid that the eye can scarcely follow them; the dancers appear to be threading an endless maze or labyrinth.

Though executed by hired performers on this occasion, there is little doubt that this is an indigenous dance, for in the district between Belgaum and Púna the little village gamins may be seen dancing it for their own amusement. Both this and the maypole