The play of ‘Alexander the Great,’ acted in the north, and printed at Newcastle, in 1788, is very similar to the Cornish St. George; and others, all showing from their likeness a common origin, may be found in Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Dorsetshire, and other parts. In Yorkshire and Northumberland, and other places in the north, they had the sword or rapier dance, where the performers were dressed in frocks, or white shirts, with paper or pasteboard helmets,—calling themselves Hector, Paris, Guy of Warwick, and other great names, and performing many evolutions with their swords, accompanied by a fiddler or doctor, and a character called Bessy.
Cards, dancing, and music, are still resorted to; but the brawl, the pavan, the minuet, the gavot, the saraband, and even the country dance, excepting in the exhilirating form of Sir Roger de Coverley, have given place to the quadrille, the polka, and the galope; and if we look at the figures of some of the old dances, our drawing-room coryphees will not be sorry to be spared the task of learning them. Take the account of the brawl in one of our old plays, which one of the characters says she has forgotten: “Why! ’tis but two singles on the left, two on the right, three doubles, a traverse of six round; do this twice, curranto pace; a figure of eight, three singles broken down, come up, meet two doubles, fall back, and then honour.” But if we have not gained much in the exhibition of this accomplishment, it is amply made up in the quality of our domestic musical acquirements, where, instead of a ditty or lesson, or sonata, droned out on the virginals or harpsichord, our ladies now treat us not only with the elegant compositions of the talented Osborne, and other able modern writers, but with the classical works of Beethoven, Mozart, and other masters of the noble science. Many of our male amateurs also, both vocal and instrumental, have acquired considerable skill; but as they in general are pretty well aware of their own merits, it will not be necessary to remind them here. Singing, however, is more particularly in quest at Christmas time, but the old carol is rarely now to be met with, though several of them possess much pleasing harmony. One of the great gratifications, however, of these Christmas meetings, where they can take place, is the re-union, even though for a short space, of relations and friends, renewing, as it were, the bonds of love and friendship; casting off for a time the cares of the world; joining, if not audibly, yet mentally, in the praise of that Creator, who has given us so much “richly to enjoy;” and, if it be His will that loved and familiar faces, one by one, drop off, yet are we not left comfortless; for though they cannot return to us, we, through faith in Him, whose Nativity we now commemorate, shall join them, in that blessed region, where the cares and trials of our weary pilgrimage here will be forgotten, as a dream that is past; and hope shall be fulfilled, when “the desire cometh,” that “is a tree of life.”
Our pagan ancestors observed their sacred festival at this season, in honour of their unknown gods, and of a mystic mythology, founded on the attributes of the Deity; but corrupted in the course of ages into a mass of fables and idolatry: but we keep it in commemoration of Him, who, as at this time, mercifully revealed Himself to us; who is omniscient and omnipresent, and of whom my lamented and learned friend, Dr. Macculloch, has emphatically said, referring to the true Christian, “Not an object will occur to him, in which he will not see the hand of God, and feel that he is under the eye of God; and if he but turn to contemplate the vacancy of the chamber around him, it is to feel that he is in the presence of his Maker; surrounded, even to contact, by Him who fills all space. Feeling this, can he dare to be evil?”
CHAPTER IX.
THE subjects of the offerings at the Epiphany, with the accompanying legend of the Three Kings or Magi, and that of carol singing, require so much space that it has been thought preferable to devote particular chapters to them, rather than interrupt the narrative of Christmas festivities.
The offerings on the day of the Epiphany were in remembrance of the Manifestation of our Saviour to the Gentiles, and of the gifts made to Him by the Magi, or Wise Men of the East; when “the kings of Tarshish and of the isles brought presents; the kings of Sheba and Saba offered gifts,” or, as the ‘Bee Hive,’ of the Romish Church, states it, “Kings came out of the Moor’s land to worship Christ.”