- Sword Dance
Sword-dance to the sound of the Bagpipe.--Fac-simile of a Manuscript in the British Museum (Fourteenth Century). - Sword-Dance
This drawing represents two men, equipped in martial habits, and each of them armed with a sword and a shield, engaged in a combat; the performance is enlivened by the sound of a horn; the musician acts in a double capacity, and is, together with a female assistant, dancing round them to the cadence of the music; and probably the actions of the combatants were also regulated by the same measure. - The Dancing Family
Pray let me introduce you to This little dancing family; For morning, afternoon, and night They danced away so happily. They twirled round about, They turned their toes out; The people wondered what the noise Could all be about. They danced from early morning, Till very late at night; Both in-doors and out-of-doors, With very great delight. And every sort of dance they knew, From every country far away; And so it was no wonder that They should keep dancing all the day. So dancing—dancing—dancing, In sunshine or in rain; And when they all left off, Why then—they all began again. - The Gěrănŏs from a vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples
Grown up men and women did not dance together, but the youth of both sexes joined in the Hormŏs or chain dance and the Gěrănŏs, or crane. The Gěrănŏs, originally from Delos, is said to have been originated by Theseus in memory of his escape from the labyrinth of Crete It was a hand-in-hand dance alternately of males and females. The dance was led by the representative of Theseus playing the lyre. - The hieroglyphics describe the dance
A favourite figure dance was universally adopted throughout the country, in which two partners, who were usually men, advanced toward each other, or stood face to face upon one leg, and having performed a series of movements, retired again in opposite directions, continuing to hold by one hand and concluding by turning each other round. - Tumbling.—XIV. Century
This representation of a girl turning over upon her hands, is from a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is not by any means my intention to insinuate, from what has been said, that there were no dances performed by the Saxon gleemen and their assistants, but such as consisted of vaulting and tumbling: on the contrary, I trust it may be proved, that their dances were varied and accommodated to the taste of those for whom the performance was appropriated; being calculated, as occasion required, to excite the admiration and procure the applause of the wealthy or the vulgar.