(d) A version which I collected in Barnes is not so perfect as those given here, only the four first lines being sung. A Kentish version sent me by Miss Broadwood is almost identical with the [Deptford game]. Miss Broadwood’s version commences—
Rosy apple, miller, miller, pear.
An Ipswich version is almost identical with that of [Hersham], Surrey (Lady C. Gurdon’s Suffolk County Folk-lore, p. 64), except that it begins “Golden apple” and ends with the marriage formula—
Now you’re married, I wish you joy,
Father and mother you must obey;
Love one another like sister and brother,
And now’s the time to kiss away.
(e) This game is probably derived from the mode of dressing the bride in the marriage ceremony, and is not very ancient. The line “Lead her to the altar” probably indicates the earliest version, corrupted later into “Lead her across the water,” and this would prove a comparatively modern origin. If, however, the “altar” version is a corruption of the “water” version, the game may go back to the pre-Christian marriage ceremony, but of this there is little evidence.
Roundabout, or Cheshire Round
This is danced by two only, one of each sex; after leading off into the middle of an imaginary circle, and dancing a short time opposite to each other, the one strives by celerity of steps in the circumference of the circle to overtake and chase the other round it; the other in the meantime endeavouring to maintain an opposite situation by equal celerity in receding.—Roberts’ Cambrian Popular Antiquities, p. 46.
Halliwell gives Round, a kind of dance. “The round dance, or the dancing of the rounds.”—Nomenclator, 1585, p. 299. There was a sort of song or ballad also so called.—Dict. Provincialisms.