This dance is very like the spring dance of other countries, where it was customary to stop before every door to give a blessing and ask for contributions. Any house omitted was considered unlucky. Men and women both take part in this dance, and the alternate processional and figure dancing shows that it is probably of the same nature as the Tideswell processional dance. It is in this respect also like the “Lancashire Morris processional,” “Long Morris,” and the tune of the Furry dance is like the tune of “Long Morris.”
Goosey Dancing.—There is also the Cornish “Goosey Dancing,” which is danced by boys and girls, and which has much in common with Saturnalian revels. It is danced at Christmas time for a week, ending on Plough Monday.
The word “goosey” probably comes from “guised,” for it is customary to dress up for the festivities and for the boys and girls to change dresses. This is a very usual feature of Saturnalian revels, and much shocked the Puritans, as it is contrary to the express law of Deuteronomy.
The Gienys Dance.—In the Isle of Man, on January 6th, the Gienys Dance is held, and the mainstyr or master of the ceremony appoints every man his tegad or valentine for the year.
The Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance.—Mr Sharp has included this in his book of Sword Dances. The dancers have stags’ horns attached to their heads, but there is no very distinctive step.
VIII. THE COUNTRY DANCE
A few country dances are still remembered by old people living in villages, but, unlike the Morris dances, by far the greater number of country dances are recorded both as to steps and figures, so that they do not come under the same heading as the strictly traditional dance. The supposition that “country-dance” is a corruption of “contre-danse,” and that it came to England from France, is not correct. It was in fact, as in name, a country dance, danced by country folk in barn and ale-house and on village greens. It travelled to France, and was called there the “Contre-danse.” Later these dances were adopted by the upper classes and even penetrated into Court circles. At this time they were at their best, and many were danced in the round form, but gradually this form became obsolete, until in the middle of the eighteenth century only the dances “longways for as many as will” were danced.
In Grove’s Dictionary of Music Mr Kidson gives an account of a dance called “Mall Peatly, the new way,” which he has seen danced in a cottage on a Yorkshire moor. “You are to hit your right elbows together and then your left, and turn with your left hands behind and your right hands before, and turn twice round and then your left elbows together, and turn as before and so to the next.” Mr Cecil Sharp has collected a number of country dances still danced by country folk, and Mr Clive Carey has also collected country dances, principally in Sussex. But the great mine of wealth wherein are the greatest numbers of these beautiful, old-fashioned dances is Playford’s Dancing Master.