The name of danse des bouffons sometimes given to the sword-dance may be explained by a very constant feature of the English examples, in which the dancers generally include or are accompanied by one or more comic or grotesque personages. The types of these grotesques are not kept very distinct in the descriptions, or, probably, in fact. But they appear to be fundamentally two. There is the ‘Tommy’ or ‘fool,’ who wears the skin and tail of a fox or some other animal, and there is the ‘Bessy,’ who is a man dressed in a woman’s clothes. And they can be paralleled from outside England. A Narr or Fasching (carnival fool) is a figure in several German sword-dances, and in one from Bohemia he has his female counterpart in a Mehlweib[674].

With the cantilenae noticed by Olaus Magnus may be compared the sets of verses with which several modern sword-dances, both in these islands and in Germany, are provided. They are sung before or during part of the dances, and as a rule are little more than an introduction of the performers, to whom they give distinctive names. If they contain any incident, it is generally of the nature of a quarrel, in which one of the dancers or one of the grotesques is killed. To this point it will be necessary to return. The names given to the characters are sometimes extremely nondescript; sometimes, under a more or less literary influence, of an heroic order. Here and there a touch of something more primitive may be detected. Five sets of verses from the north of England are available in print. Two of these are of Durham provenance. One, from Houghton-le-Spring, has, besides the skin-clad ‘Tommy’ and the ‘Bessy,’ five dancers. These are King George, a Squire’s Son also called Alick or Alex, a King of Sicily, Little Foxey, and a Pitman[675]. The other Durham version has a captain called True Blue, a Squire’s Son, Mr. Snip a tailor, a Prodigal Son (replaced in later years by a Sailor), a Skipper, a Jolly Dog. There is only one clown, who calls himself a ‘fool,’ and acts as treasurer. He is named Bessy, but wears a hairy cap with a fox’s brush pendent[676]. Two other versions come from Yorkshire. At Wharfdale there are seven dancers, Thomas the clown, his son Tom, Captain Brown, Obadiah Trim a tailor, a Foppish Knight, Love-ale a vintner, and Bridget the clown’s wife[677]. At Linton in Craven there are five, the clown, Nelson, Jack Tar, Tosspot, and Miser a woman[678]. The fifth version is of unnamed locality. It has two clowns, Tommy in skin and tail, and Bessy, and amongst the dancers are a Squire’s Son and a Tailor[679]. Such a nomenclature will not repay much analysis. The ‘Squire,’ whose son figures amongst the dancers, is identical with the ‘Tommy,’ although why he should have a son I do not know. Similarly, the ‘Bridget’ at Wharfdale and the ‘Miser’ at Linton correspond to the ‘Bessy’ who appears elsewhere.

The Shetland dance, so far as the names go, is far more literary and less of a folk affair than any of the English examples. The grotesques are absent altogether, and the dancers belong wholly to that heroic category which is also represented in a degenerate form at Houghton-le-Spring. They are in fact those ‘seven champions of Christendom’—St. George of England, St. James of Spain, St. Denys of France, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Anthony of Italy, and St. Andrew of Scotland—whose legends were first brought together under that designation by Richard Johnson in 1596[680].

Precisely the same divergence between a popular and a literary or heroic type of nomenclature presents itself in such of the German sword-dance rhymes as are in print. Three very similar versions from Styria, Hungary, and Bohemia are traceable to a common ‘Austro-Bavarian’ archetype[681]. The names of these, so far as they are intelligible at all, appear to be due to the village imagination, working perhaps in one or two instances, such as ‘Grünwald’ or ‘Wilder Waldmann,’ upon stock figures of the folk festivals[682]. It is the heroic element, however, which predominates in the two other sets of verses which are available. One is from the Clausthal in the Harz mountains, and here the dancers represent the five kings of England, Saxony, Poland, Denmark, and Moorland, together with a serving-man, Hans, and one Schnortison, who acts as leader and treasurer of the party[683]. In the other, from Lübeck, the dancers are the ‘worthies’ Kaiser Karl, Josua, Hector, David, Alexander, and Judas Maccabaeus. They fight with one Sterkader, in whom Müllenhoff finds the Danish hero Stercatherus mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus; and to the Hans of the Clausthal corresponds a Klas Rugebart, who seems to be the red-bearded St. Nicholas[684].

In view of the wide range of the sword-dance in Germany, I do not think it is necessary to attach any importance to the theories advanced by Sir Walter Scott and others that it is, in England and Scotland, of Scandinavian origin. It is true that it appears to be found mainly in those parts of these islands where the influence of Danes and Northmen may be conjectured to have been strongest. But I believe that this is a matter of appearance merely, and that a type of folk-dance far more widely spread in the south of England than the sword-dance proper, is really identical with it. This is the morris-dance, the chief characteristic of which is that the performers wear bells which jingle at every step. Judging by the evidence of account-books, as well as by the allusions of contemporary writers, the morris was remarkably popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries[685]. Frequently, but by no means always, it is mentioned in company with the May-game[686]. In a certain painted window at Betley in Staffordshire are represented six morris-dancers, together with a May-pole, a musician, a fool, a crowned man on a hobby-horse, a crowned lady with a pink in her hand, and a friar. The last three may reasonably be regarded as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck[687]. The closeness of the relation between the morris-dance and the May-game is, however, often exaggerated. The Betley figures only accompany the morris-dance; they do not themselves wear the bells. And besides the window, the only trace of evidence that any member of the Robin Hood cortège, with the exception of Maid Marian, was essential to the morris-dance, is a passage in a masque of Ben Jonson’s, which so seems to regard the friar[688]. The fact is that the morris-dance was a great deal older, as an element in the May-game, than Robin Hood, and that when Robin Hood’s name was forgotten in this connexion, the morris-dance continued to be in vogue, not at May-games only, but at every form of rustic merry-making. On the other hand, it is true that the actual dancers were generally accompanied by grotesque personages, and that one of these was a woman, or a man dressed in woman’s clothes, to whom literary writers at least continued to give the name of Maid Marian. The others have nothing whatever to do with Robin Hood. They were a clown or fool, and a hobby-horse, who, if the evidence of an Elizabethan song can be trusted, was already beginning to go out of fashion[689]. A rarer feature was a dragon, and it is possible that, when there was a dragon, the rider of the hobby-horse was supposed to personate St. George[690]. The morris-dance is by no means extinct, especially in the north and midlands. Accounts of it are available from Lancashire and Cheshire[691], Derbyshire[692], Shropshire[693], Leicestershire[694], and Oxfordshire[695]; and there are many other counties in which it makes, or has recently made, an appearance[696]. The hobby-horse, it would seem, is now at last, except in Derbyshire, finally ‘forgot’; but the two other traditional grotesques are still de rigueur. Few morris-dances are complete without the ‘fool’ or clown, amongst whose various names that of ‘squire’ in Oxfordshire and that of ‘dirty Bet’ in Lancashire are the most interesting. The woman is less invariable. Her Tudor name of Maid Marian is preserved in Leicestershire alone; elsewhere she appears as a shepherdess, or Eve, or ‘the fool’s wife’; and sometimes she is merged with the ‘fool’ into a single nondescript personage.

The morris-dance is by no means confined to England. There are records of it from Scotland[697], Germany[698], Flanders[699], Switzerland[700], Italy[701], Spain[702], and France[703]. In the last-named country Tabourot described it about 1588 under the name of morisque[704], and the earlier English writers call it the morisce, morisk, or morisco[705]. This seems to imply a derivation of the name at least from the Spanish morisco, a Moor. The dance itself has consequently been held to be of Moorish origin, and the habit of blackening the face has been considered as a proof of this[706]. Such a theory seems to invert the order of facts. The dance is too closely bound up with English village custom to be lightly regarded as a foreign importation; and I would suggest that the faces were not blackened, because the dancers represented Moors, but rather the dancers were thought to represent Moors, because their faces were blackened. The blackened face is common enough in the village festival. Hence, as we have seen, May-day became proper to the chimney-sweeps, and we have found a conjectural reason for the disguise in the primitive custom of smearing the face with the beneficent ashes of the festival fire[707]. Blackened faces are known in the sword-dance as well as in the morris-dance[708]; and there are other reasons which make it probable that the two are only variants of the same performance. Tabourot, it is true, distinguishes les bouffons, or the sword-dance, and le morisque; but then Tabourot is dealing with the sophisticated versions of the folk-dances used in society, and Cotgrave, translating les buffons, can find no better English term than morris for the purpose[709]. The two dances appear at the same festivals, and they have the same grotesques; for the Tommy and Bessy of the English sword-dance, who occasionally merge in one, are obviously identical with the Maid Marian and the ‘fool’ of the morris-dance, who also nowadays similarly coalesce. There are traces, too, of an association of the hobby-horse with the sword-dance, as well as with the morris-dance[710]. Most conclusive of all, however, is the fact that in Oxfordshire and in Shropshire the morris-dancers still use swords or wooden staves which obviously represent swords, and that the performers of the elaborate Revesby sword-dance or play, to be hereafter described, are called in the eighteenth-century manuscript ‘morrice dancers[711].’ I do not think that the floating handkerchiefs of the morris-dance are found in its congener, nor do I know what, if any, significance they have. Probably, like the ribbons, they merely represent rustic notions of ornament. Müllenhoff lays stress on the white shirts or smocks which he finds almost universal in the sword-dance[712]. The morris-dancers are often described as dressed in white; but here too, if the ordinary work-a-day costume is a smock, the festal costume is naturally a clean white smock. Finally, there are the bells. These, though they have partially disappeared in the north, seem to be proper to the morris-dance, and to differentiate it from the sword-dance[713]. But this is only so when the English examples are alone taken into consideration, for Müllenhoff quotes one Spanish and three German descriptions of sword-dances in which the bells are a feature[714]. Tabourot affords similar evidence for the French version[715]; while Olaus Magnus supplements his account of the Scandinavian sword-dance with one of a similar performance, in which the swords were replaced by bows, and bells were added[716]. The object of the bells was probably to increase or preserve the musical effect of the clashing swords. The performers known to Tacitus were nudi, and no bells are mentioned. One other point with regard to the morris-dance is worth noticing before we leave the subject. It is capable of use both as a stationary and a processional dance, and therefore illustrates both of the two types of dancing motion naturally evolved from the circumstances of the village festival[717].

Müllenhoff regards the sword-dance as primarily a rhythmic Abbild or mimic representation of war, subsequently modified in character by use at the village feasts[718]. It is true that the notice of Tacitus and the allusion in Beowulf suggest that it had a military character; and it may fairly be inferred that it formed part of that war-cult from which, as pointed out in a previous chapter, heroic poetry sprang. This is confirmed by the fact that some at least of the dramatis personae of the modern dances belong to the heroic category. Side by side with local types such as the Pitman or the Sailor, and with doublets of the grotesques such as Little Foxey or the Squire’s Son[719], appear the five kings of the Clausthal dance, the ‘worthies’ of the Lübeck dance, and the ‘champions of Christendom’ of the Shetland dance. These particular groups betray a Renaissance rather than a mediaeval imagination; as with the morris-dance of The Two Noble Kinsmen, the village schoolmaster, Holophernes or another, has probably been at work upon them[720]. Some of the heterogeneous English dramatis personae, Nelson for instance, testify to a still later origin. On the other hand, the Sterkader or Stercatherus of the Lübeck dance suggests that genuine national heroes were occasionally celebrated in this fashion. At the same time I do not believe, with Müllenhoff, that the sword-dance originated in the war-cult. Its essentially agricultural character seems to be shown by the grotesques traditionally associated with it, the man in woman’s clothes, the skin or tail-wearing clown and the hobby-horse, all of which seem to find their natural explanation in the facts of agricultural worship[721]. Again, the dance makes its appearance, not like heroic poetry in general as part of the minstrel repertory, but as a purely popular thing at the agricultural festivals. To these festivals, therefore, we may reasonably suppose it to have originally belonged, and to have been borrowed from them by the young warriors who danced before the king. They, however, perhaps gave it the heroic element which, in its turn, drifted into the popular versions. We have already seen that popular heroic cantilenae existed together with those of minstrelsy up to a late date. Nor does Müllenhoff’s view find much support from the classical sword-dances which he adduces. As to the origin of the lusus Troiae or Pyrrhic dance which the Romans adopted from Doric Greece, I can say nothing[722]; but the native Italian dance of the Salii or priests of Mars in March and October is clearly agricultural. It belongs to the cult of Mars, not as war-god, but in his more primitive quality of a fertilization spirit[723].

Further, I believe that the use of swords in the dance was not martial at all; their object was to suggest not a fight, but a mock or symbolical sacrifice. Several of the dances include figures in which the swords are brought together in a significant manner about the person of one or more of the dancers. Thus in the Scandinavian dance described by Olaus Magnus, a quadrata rosa of swords is placed on the head of each performer. A precisely similar figure occurs in the Shetland and in a variety of the Yorkshire dances[724]. In the Siebenbürgen dances there are two figures in which the performers pretend to cut at each other’s heads or feet, and a third in which one of them has the swords put in a ring round his neck[725]. This latter evolution occurs also in a variety of the Yorkshire dance[726] and in a Spanish one described by Müllenhoff after a seventeenth-century writer. And here the figure has the significant name of la degollada, ‘the beheading[727].’

CHAPTER X
THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

[Bibliographical Note.—The subject is treated by T. F. Ordish, English Folk-Drama in Folk-Lore, ii. 326, iv. 162. The Folk-Lore Society has in preparation a volume on Folk-Drama to be edited by Mr. Ordish (F. L. xiii. 296). The following is a list of the twenty-nine printed versions upon which the account of the St. George play in the present chapter is based. The Lutterworth play is given in Appendix K.