CHAPTER VIII
THE MAY-GAME
[Bibliographical Note.—The festal character of primitive dance and song is admirably brought out by R. Wallaschek, Primitive Music (1893); E. Grosse, Die Anfänge der Kunst (1894, French transl. 1902); Y. Hirn, The Origins of Art (1900); F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry (1901). The popular element in French lyric is illustrated by A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France au Moyen Âge (1889), and J. Tiersot, Histoire de la Chanson populaire en France (1889). Most of such English material as exists is collected in Mrs. Gomme’s Traditional Games (1896-8) and G. F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes (1892). For comparative study E. Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886), may be consulted. The notices of the May-game are scattered through the works mentioned in the bibliographical note to ch. vi and others.]
The foregoing chapter has illustrated the remarkable variety of modes in which the instinct of play comes to find expression. But of all such the simplest and most primitive is undoubtedly the dance. Psychology discovers in the dance the most rudimentary and physical of the arts, and traces it to precisely that overflow of nervous energies shut off from their normal practical ends which constitutes play[528]. And the verdict of psychology is confirmed by philology; for in all the Germanic languages the same word signifies both ‘dance’ and ‘play,’ and in some of them it is even extended to the cognate ideas of ‘sacrifice’ or ‘festival[529]’. The dance must therefore be thought of as an essential part of all the festivals with which we have to deal. And with the dance comes song: the rhythms of motion seem to have been invariably accompanied by the rhythms of musical instruments, or of the voice, or of both combined[530].
The dance had been from the beginning a subject of contention between Christianity and the Roman world[531]; but whereas the dances of the East and South, so obnoxious to the early Fathers, were mainly those of professional entertainers, upon the stage or at banquets, the missionaries of the West had to face the even more difficult problem of a folk-dance and folk-song which were amongst the most inveterate habits of the freshly converted peoples. As the old worship vanished, these tended to attach themselves to the new. Upon great feasts and wake-days, choruses of women invaded with wanton cantica and ballationes the precincts of the churches and even the sacred buildings themselves, a desecration against which generation after generation of ecclesiastical authorities was fain to protest[532]. Clerkly sentiment in the matter is represented by a pious legend, very popular in the Middle Ages, which told how some reprobate folk of Kölbigk in Anhalt disobeyed the command of a priest to cease their unholy revels before the church of Saint Magnus while he said mass on Christmas day, and for their punishment must dance there the year round without stopping[533]. The struggle was a long one, and in the end the Church never quite succeeded even in expelling the dance from its own doors. The chapter of Wells about 1338 forbade choreae and other ludi within the cathedral and the cloisters, chiefly on account of the damage too often done to its property[534]. A seventeenth-century French writer records that he had seen clergy and singing-boys dancing at Easter in the churches of Paris[535]; and even at the present day there are some astounding survivals. At Seville, as is well known, the six boys, called los Seises, dance with castanets before the Holy Sacrament in the presence of the archbishop at Shrovetide, and during the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Corpus Christi[536]. At Echternach in Luxembourg there is an annual dance through the church of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Willibrord[537], while at Barjols in Provence a ‘tripe-dance’ is danced at mass on St. Marcel’s day in honour of the patron[538].
Still less, of course, did dance and song cease to be important features of the secular side of the festivals. We have already seen how cantilenae on the great deeds of heroes had their vogue in the mouths of the chori of young men and maidens, as well as in those of the minstrels[539]. The Carmina Burana describe the dances of girls upon the meadows as amongst the pleasures of spring[540]. William Fitzstephen tells us that such dances were to be seen in London in the twelfth century[541], and we have found the University of Oxford solemnly forbidding them in the thirteenth. The romans and pastourelles frequently mention chansons or rondets de carole, which appear to have been the chansons used to accompany the choric dances, and to have generally consisted of a series of couplets sung by the leader, and a refrain with which the rest of the band answered him. Occasionally the refrains are quoted[542]. The minstrels borrowed this type of folk chanson, and the conjoint dance and song themselves found their way from the village green to the courtly hall. In the twelfth century ladies carolent, and more rarely even men condescend to take a part[543]. Still later carole, like tripudium, seems to become a term for popular rejoicing in general, not necessarily expressed in rhythmical shape[544].
The customs of the village festival gave rise by natural development to two types of dance[545]. There was the processional dance of the band of worshippers in progress round their boundaries and from field to field, from house to house, from well to well of the village. It is this that survives in the dance of the Echternach pilgrims, or in the ‘faddy-dance’ in and out the cottage doors at Helston wake. And it is probably this that is at the bottom of the interesting game of ‘Thread the Needle.’ This is something like ‘Oranges and Lemons,’ the first part of which, indeed, seems to have been adapted from it. There is, however, no sacrifice or ‘tug-of-war,’ although there is sometimes a ‘king,’ or a ‘king’ and his ‘lady’ or ‘bride’ in the accompanying rhymes, and in one instance a ‘pancake.’ The players stand in two long lines. Those at the end of each line form an arch with uplifted arms, and the rest run in pairs beneath it. Then another pair form an arch, and the process is repeated. In this way long strings of lads and lasses stream up and down the streets or round and about a meadow or green. In many parts of England this game is played annually on Shrove Tuesday or Easter Monday, and the peasants who play it at Châtre in central France say that it is done ‘to make the hemp grow.’ Its origin in connexion with the agricultural festivals can therefore hardly be doubtful[546]. It is probable that in the beginning the players danced rather than ran under the ‘arch’; and it is obvious that the ‘figure’ of the game is practically identical with one familiar in Sir Roger de Coverley and other old English ‘country’ dances of the same type.
Just as the ‘country’ dance is derived from the processional dance, so the other type of folk-dance, the ronde or ‘round,’ is derived from the comparatively stationary dance of the group of worshippers around the more especially sacred objects of the festival, such as the tree or the fire[547]. The custom of dancing round the May-pole has been more or less preserved wherever the May-pole is known. But ‘Thread the Needle’ itself often winds up with a circular dance or ronde, either around one of the players, or, on festival occasions, around the representative of the earlier home of the fertilization divinity, the parish church. This custom is popularly known as ‘clipping the church[548].’
Naturally the worshippers at a festival would dance in their festival costume; that is to say, in the garb of leaves and flowers worn for the sake of the beneficent influence of the indwelling divinity, or in the hides and horns of sacrificial animals which served a similar purpose. Travellers describe elaborate and beautiful beast-dances amongst savage peoples, and the Greeks had their own bear-and crane-dances, as well as the dithyrambic goat-dance of the Dionysia. They had also flower dances[549]. In England the village dancers wear posies, but I do not know that they ever attempt a more elaborate representation of flowers. But a good example of the beast-dance is furnished by the ‘horn-dance’ at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, held now at a September wake, and formerly at Christmas. In this six of the performers wear sets of horns. These are preserved from year to year in the church, and according to local tradition the dance used at one time to take place in the churchyard on a Sunday. The horns are said to be those of the reindeer, and from this it may possibly be inferred that they were brought to Abbots Bromley by Scandinavian settlers. The remaining performers represent a hobby-horse, a clown, a woman, and an archer, who makes believe to shoot the horned men[550].
The motifs of the dances and their chansons must also at first have been determined by the nature of the festivals at which they took place. There were dances, no doubt, at such domestic festivals as weddings and funerals[551]. In Flanders it is still the custom to dance at the funeral of a young girl, and a very charming chanson is used[552]. The development of epic poetry from the cantilenae of the war-festival has been noted in a former chapter. At the agricultural festivals, the primary motif is, of course, the desire for the fertility of the crops and herds. The song becomes, as in the Anglo-Saxon charm, so often referred to, practically a prayer[553]. With this, and with the use of ‘Thread the Needle’ at Châtre ‘to make the hemp grow,’ may be compared the games known to modern children, as to Gargantua, in which the operations of the farmer’s year, and in particular his prayer for his crops, are mimicked in a ronde[554]. Allusions to the process of the seasons, above all to the delight of the renouveau in spring, would naturally also find a place in the festival songs. The words of the famous thirteenth-century lyric were perhaps written to be sung to the twinkling feet of English girls in a round. It has the necessary refrain:
‘Sumer is icumen in,