Hence it appears a ring was usually the prize, and given to him who could hop best, and continue to do so the longest.
But to return to the egg-dance. This performance was common enough about thirty years back, [734] and was well received at Sadler's Wells; where I saw it exhibited, not by simply hopping round a single egg, but in a manner that much increased the difficulty. A number of eggs, I do not precisely recollect how many, but I believe about twelve or fourteen, were placed at certain distances marked upon the stage; the dancer, taking his stand, was blindfolded, and a hornpipe being played in the orchestra, he went through all the paces and figures of the dance, passing backwards and forwards between the eggs without touching one of them.
XX.—THE LADDER-DANCE.
So called, because the performer stands upon a ladder, which he shifts from place to place, and ascends or descends without losing the equilibrium, or permitting it to fall. This dance was practised at Sadler's Wells at the commencement of the last century, and revived about thirty years back. It is still continued there [735] by Dubois, who calls himself the clown of the Wells, and is a very useful actor, as well as an excellent performer upon the tight-rope. In the reign of queen Anne, James Miles, who declared himself to be a performer from Sadler's Wells, kept a music-booth in Bartholomew Fair, where he exhibited nineteen different kinds of dances; among them were a wrestler's dance, vaulting upon the slack rope, and dancing upon the ladder; the latter, he tells us, as well as the sword-dance, was performed by "a young woman surpassing all her sex." [736]—An Inventory of Playhouse Furniture, quoted in the Tatler [737] under the article, Materials for Dancing, specifies masques, castanets, and a ladder of ten rounds. I apprehend the ladder-dance originated from the ancient pastime of walking or dancing upon very high stilts. A specimen of such an exhibition is here given from a MS. roll in the Royal Library, written and illuminated in the reign of Henry III. [738] The actor is exercising a double function, that is, of a musician, and of a dancer.
62. Stilt Dancing.—XIII. Century.
XXI.—JOCULAR DANCES.
In the Roman de la Rose, we read of a dance, the name of which is not recorded, performed by two young women lightly clothed. The original reads, "Qui estoient en pure cottes, et tresses a menu tresse;" which Chaucer renders, "In kyrtels, and none other wede, and fayre ytressed every tresse." The French intimates that their hair was platted, or braided in small braids. The thin clothing, I suppose, was used then, as it is now upon like occasions, to show their persons to greater advantage. In their dancing they displayed a variety of singular attitudes; the one coming as it were privately to the other, and, when they were near together, in a playsome manner they turned their faces about, so that they seemed continually to kiss each other