XIII.—ANTIQUITY, &c. OF DANCING.
The example of the nobility was followed by the middling classes of the community; they again were imitated by their inferiors, who spent much of their leisure time in dancing, and especially upon holidays; which is noticed and condemned with great severity by the moral and religious writers, as we may find by turning to the Introduction. Dancing is there called a heathenish practice, and said to have been productive of filthy gestures, for which reason it is ranked with other wanton sports unfit to be exhibited. An old drama without date, but probably written early in the reign of Elizabeth, entitled A new Interlude and a Mery, of the Nature of the four Elements, [896] accuses the people at large, with "loving pryncypally disportes, as daunsynge, syngynge, toys, tryfuls, laughynge, and gestynge; for," adds the author, "connynge they set not by." [897] But Sebastian Brant, in his Ship of Fooles, is much more severe upon this subject. I shall give the passage as it is paraphrased by Barclay: [898]
The priestes, and clerkes, to daunce have no shame;
The frere, or monke in his frocke and cowle,
Must daunce; and the doctor lepeth to play the foole.
He derives the origin of dancing from the Jews, when they worshipped the golden calf:
Before this ydoll dauncing, both wife and man
Despised God; thus dauncing first began.
The damsels of London, as far back as the twelfth century, spent the evenings on holidays in dancing before their masters' doors. Stow laments the abolition of this "open pastime," which he remembered to have seen practised in his youth, [899] and considered it not only as innocent in itself, but also as a preventive to worse deeds "within doors," which he feared would follow the suppression. The country lasses perform this exercise upon the greens, where it is said they dance all their rustic measures, rounds, and jiggs. [900] We read also of dancing the Raye, [901] or Reye, as it is written by Chaucer, and which appears to have been a rustic dance, and probably the same as that now called the Hay, where they lay hold of hands, and dance round in a ring. A dance of this kind occurs several times in the Bodleian MS., [902] dated A. D. 1344, whence many of the engravings which elucidate this work are taken. Chaucer speaks also of love-dances, and springs, as well known in his time; [903] but none of them are described. Of late years dancing is generally thought to be an essential part of a young female's education, and is commonly taught her at the boarding-school; and perhaps, when used with moderation, may not be improper. But some of the dances that the girls are permitted to perform are justly to be censured; among these may be ranked one called Hunt the Squirrel, in which, while the woman flies the man pursues her, but as soon as she turns, he runs away, and she is obliged to follow; and the Kissing-dance, the same, I suppose, as the Cushion-dance mentioned by Heywood at the commencement of the seventeenth century: [904] both of them are discommended in a paper of the Spectator. [905]