erecti calcant....
The bears dance, then, along with the singing and dancing women; Grimm calls them spielweiber, and quotes an ecclesiastical prohibition (ibid., p. xv); but part of the description, witness the plebs, will pass for a communal dance.
[864]. In the translation ascribed to Chaucer, w. 759 ff., “Tha myghtist thou karoles sene,” etc.
[865]. De vulg. Eloq., II. iii. See note in Howell’s translation, London, 1890. Crescimbeni, L’Istoria della volgar Poesia, Venez., 1731 (written in 1697), quotes, though in disapproval, Minturno for the primacy of ballate (p. 148): “ballads,” says M., because “si cantavano ballando,” which is the root of the matter.
[866]. It has been repeatedly noticed that older English dances are known by the ballads sung to them. Even some of the tragic ballads were used for the dance; but one must think of gay little songs and refrains as staple for the merry rounds; nothing else will fit the seasons when “maydes daunce in a ring.”
[867]. 3ᵇ, Bodley copy of 1568. See also the refrain for a dance in the Four Elements, above, p. [322].
[868]. See Kind-Harts Dreame, ed. Rimbault, Percy Soc., 1841, p. 38, and note, p. 79.
[869]. English Minstrelsie, I., p. ix.
[870]. In 1767 a “young lady from Scotland” sang as she danced, at the royal theatre in Copenhagen; but there, too, in 1726, a Stockholm dancing-girl had done the same thing. “Novelty” is not the word. See Steenstrup, Vore Folkev., pp. 8 f.
[871]. Brand, “New Year’s Day.”