I am not able to ascertain the antiquity of this dance. The indication of such a performance occurs in an old comedy, entitled The longer thou livest, the more Foole thou art, by William Wager, [732] in the reign of queen Elizabeth, where we meet with these lines:
Upon my one foote pretely I can hoppe,
And daunce it trimley about an egge.
Dancing upon one foot was exhibited by the Saxon gleemen, and probably by the Norman minstrels, but more especially by the women-dancers, who might thence acquire the name of hoppesteres, which is given by Chaucer. A vestige of this denomination is still retained, and applied to dancing, though somewhat contemptuously; for an inferior dancing-meeting is generally called a hop. A representation of the dance on one foot, taken from a manuscript of the tenth century, appears by the engraving No. 52, [733] where the gleeman is performing to the sound of the harp.
Hopping matches for prizes were occasionally made in the sixteenth century, as we learn from John Heywoode the epigrammatist. In his Proverbs, printed in 1566, are the following lines:
Where wooers hoppe in and out, long time may bring
Him that hoppeth best at last to have the ring—
—I hoppyng without for a ringe of a rushe.
And again, in the Four P's, a play by the same author, one of the characters is directed "to hop upon one foot;" and another says,
Here were a hopper to hop for the ring.