[536] Grove, 106. A full account of the ceremony at the feast of the Conception in 1901 is given in the Church Times for Jan. 17, 1902.
[537] Grove, 103; Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 430; Mélusine (1879), 39; N. and Q. for May 17, 1890. The dance is headed by the clergy, and proceeds to a traditional tune from the banks of the Sûre to the church, up sixty-two steps, along the north aisle, round the altar deasil, and down the south aisle. It is curious that until the seventeenth century only men took part in it. St. Willibrord is famous for curing nervous diseases, and the pilgrimage is done by way of vow for such cures. The local legend asserts that the ceremony had its origin in an eighth-century cattle-plague, which ceased through an invocation of St. Willibrord: it is a little hard on the saint, whose prohibition of dances at the church-door has just been quoted.
[538] Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 409. A similarly named saint, St. Martial, was formerly honoured in the same way. Every psalm on his day ended, not with the Gloria Patri, but with a dance, and the chant, ‘Saint-Marceau, pregas per nous, et nous epingaren per vous’ (Du Méril, La Com. 68).
[539] Cf. p. 26. There were ‘madinnis that dansit’ before James IV of Scotland at Forres, Elgin and Dernway in 1504, but nothing is said of songs (L. H. T. Accounts, ii. 463).
[540] Carm. Bur. 191:
‘ludunt super gramina virgines decorae
quarum nova carmina dulci sonant ore.’
Ibid. 195:
‘ecce florescunt lilia,
et virginum dant agmina