The fiddler, in return, sings or says, for it partakes of both, “I pray, kind sir, why say you so?”
The answer is, “Because Joan Sanderson won’t come to.”
“But,” replies the fiddler, “she must come to, and she shall come to, whether she will or no.”
The young man, thus armed with the authority of the village musician, recommences his dance round the room, but stops when he comes to the girl he likes best, and drops the cushion at her feet; she puts her penny in the pewter pot, and kneels down with the young man on the cushion, and he salutes her.
When they rise, the woman takes up the cushion, and leads the dance, the man following, and holding the skirt of her gown; and having made the circuit of the room, they stop near the fiddler, and the same dialogue is repeated, except, as it is now the woman who speaks, it is John Sanderson who won’t come to, and the fiddler’s mandate is issued to him, not her.
The woman drops the cushion at the feet of her favourite man; the same ceremony and the same dance are repeated, till every man and woman, the pot bearer last, has been taken out, and all have danced round the room in a file.
The pence are the perquisite of the fiddler.
H. N.
P.S. There is a description of this dance in Miss Hutton’s “Oakwood Hall.”