I have not been fortunate enough to meet with any delineation that accords with the foregoing descriptions of the sword-dance; but in a Latin manuscript of Prudentius with Saxon notes, written in the ninth century, and now in the Cotton Library, [706] a military dance of a different kind occurs. It is exceedingly curious, and has not, that I recollect, been mentioned by any of our writers. The drawing is copied below.
60. Sword-Dance.
This drawing represents two men, equipped in martial habits, and each of them armed with a sword and a shield, engaged in a combat; the performance is enlivened by the sound of a horn; the musician acts in a double capacity, and is, together with a female assistant, dancing round them to the cadence of the music; and probably the actions of the combatants were also regulated by the same measure.
Early in the last century, and, I doubt not, long before that period, a species of sword-dance, usually performed by young women, constituted a part of the juggler's exhibition at Bartholomew fair. I have before me two bills of the shows there presented some time in the reign of queen Anne. The one speaks of "dancing with several naked swords, performed by a child of eight years of age;" which, the showman assures us, had given "satisfaction to all persons." The other, put forth, it seems, by one who belonged to Sadler's Wells, promises the company, that they shall see "a young woman dance with the swords, and upon a ladder, surpassing all her sex." Both these bills were printed in the reign of queen Anne; the first belonged to a showman named Crawley; [707] and the second to James Miles, from Sadler's Wells, who calls his theatre a music booth, and the exhibition consisted chiefly of dancing. The originals are in the Harleian Library. [708] About thirty years back, [709] I remember to have seen at Flockton's, a much noted but very clumsy juggler, a girl about eighteen or twenty years of age, who came upon the stage with four naked swords, two in each hand; when the music played, she turned round with great swiftness, and formed a great variety of figures with the swords, holding them over her head, down by her sides, behind her, and occasionally she thrust them in her bosom. The dance generally continued about ten or twelve minutes; and, when it was finished, she stopped suddenly, without appearing to be in the least giddy from the constant reiteration of the same motion.
IX.—THE ROPE-DANCE.
This species of amusement is certainly very ancient. Terence, in the prologue to Hecyra, complains that the attention of the public was drawn from his play, by the exhibitions of a rope-dancer:
Ita populus studio stupidus in funambulo
Animum occupârat.