each other forward on great pieces of ice. "Dancing with swords" was
a favourite form of amusement among the young men of Northern
nations, and in those parts of England where the Norsemen and Danes
settled, this graceful gymnastic custom long lingered.

[Illustration: DANCING ON THE VILLAGE GREEN.]

The old country dances which used to delight our fathers seem to be
vanishing. I have not seen for many years the village rustics
"crossing hands" and going "down the middle," and tripping merrily
to the tune of a fiddle; but perhaps they do so still.

In olden days the city maidens of London were often "dancing and
tripping till moonlight" in the open air; and later on we read that
on holidays, after evening prayer, while the youths exercised their
wasters and bucklers, the maidens, "one of them playing on a
timbrel, in sight of their masters and dames, used to dance for
garlands hanged athwart the streets." Stow, the recorder of this
custom, wisely adds, "which open pastimes in my youth, being now
suppressed, worser practices within doors are to be feared." In some
parts of England they still trip it gaily in the moonlight. A
clergyman in Gloucestershire tried to establish a cricket club in
his parish, but his efforts were all in vain; the young men
preferred to dance together on the village green, and the more manly
diversion had no charms for them. Dancing was never absent from our
ancestors' festivities, and round the merry May-pole

"Where the jocund swains
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe strains;"