FOOTNOTES
[1] Marmion.
[2] Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
[3] Rapin's History of England.
[4] Chester was also called Devana by the Romans, and here the "legio vicessima victrix" was stationed.
[5] This ballad will be found in the second volume of "Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, page 405." And it will no doubt be recollected by the reader that the celebrated Sterne makes this tune to be the favourite air of Uncle Toby in "Tristram Shandy." In speaking of this ballad, Bishop Percy remarks, that "the following rhymes, slight and insignificant as they now may seem, had once a more powerful effect than either the Philippic of Demosthenes or Cicero; and contributed not a little towards the great revolution in 1688."
[6] The Rinceadh-Fada, or Irish dance, is thus described by the late Mr. Cooper Walker: "When that unfortunate Prince, James II., landed at Kinsale, his friends who awaited his arrival on the sea shore received him with the Rinceadh-Fada, or Irish dance, the figure and execution of which delighted him exceedingly. This was the figure: Three persons abreast, each holding a corner of a white handkerchief, first moved forward a few paces to slow music; the rest of the dancers followed two and two, a white handkerchief held between each. Then the dance began, the music suddenly changing to brisk time; the dancers then passed with a quick step under the handkerchief of the three in front; they wheeled round in semi-circles, forming a variety of pleasing and animating evolutions, interspersed at intervals with entrè chants, or cuts; they then united, and fell back again in their original places behind, and paused. Perhaps the classical reader will find—and we think he may—a similarity between our Rinceadh-Fada and the festal dance of the Greeks."—Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, 4to., Dublin, 1786, pp. 151, 152, 154.
Mr. Walker adds in a note, "Before we adopted the French style of dancing, our public and private balls used always to conclude with the Rinceadh-Fada."
[7] Rapin's History of England.