“It must have been a select party,” says Mr. H., “that W. was at, if none of them got drunk.”
“The great dancing tunes in Berks are Fisher’s Hornpipe, Washington’s Grand March, Charlie over the Water, Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia, and We won’t go Home till Morning.”
“The walls in the stone houses in Berks are generally two feet thick, built like forts, with plenty of room to sit in the window-seats, but usually the landlord had a long bar-room table, on which he put chairs for the fiddlers. About every third dance they must have a drink, which frequent potations sometimes brought them to the floor, unable to distinguish sounds.” “The dancing they indulge in in Berks,” says Mr. H., “is not the fashionable kind, but is more exhausting than mauling rails in August, or thrashing rye with a flail. The figures are called out by some skilful person; the dances are called straight fours or hoe-downs, the dancers being arranged in four rows, in a sort of double column on each side. After the inside couples have danced and all have changed places, the former are allowed to rest while the outside couples dance.”
“The battalion (Pennsylvania Dutch, Badolya?) is an annual day of joy and festivity in Berks County. The annual training, which gave name to the day, has long been given up, but still just before hay-making the landlords of the country towns, such as Kutztown or Hamburg, will advertise that they will hold the annual battalion (without any soldiers). The peanut-venders, the men with flying-horses, and the others who expect to reap the harvest, come during the night before, and by six in the morning everything is ready, and about that hour the farmers begin to come in, wives, sons, daughters, hired men, and maids, even little children and quite small babies.
“The farmers patronize the landlords by dining and drinking. You can get a good dinner at Kutztown for less money than in any other town I know. As for drinking, bars have even been set up upon the second floor where the dancing took place.
“The old folks amuse themselves by talking together, looking on and seeing how well their sons and daughters can dance, the old men drinking a little whiskey, several times repeated, and perhaps treating their wives to some sarsaparilla. By evening the old folks will be at home; but the daughters, who could hardly expect the young men to walk home with them as long as the sun was shining, stay later, carrying gingerbread and pea-nuts home in their handkerchiefs.
“Roving gamblers also visit the battalion; and many an unwary youth has lost all his money, earned by hard work, and, after that was gone, has striven to better his fortune, but unsuccessfully, by giving up his watch.”
The remark of the last speaker, that they still have the badolya, or annual training, in Berks without any soldiers, reminds me that they still have in Germany the Kirch-weih, church consecration, or saint’s day, without going to any church at all, but dance and are merry after harvest.
I was told some years back of farmers in Berks “worth from thirty to eighty thousand dollars who never bring wheat bread to the table except at Christmas and New Year’s. This is from their great economy and desire to sell the wheat.”