e
evidently bored and ashamed. But these eight be-ribanded sons of the
soil were hardly less glad in dancing than was that antique Moor who,
having slain beneath the stars some long-feared and long-hated enemy,
danced wildly on the desert sand, and, to make music, tore strips of
bells from his horse's saddle and waved them in either hand while he
danced, and made so great a noise in the night air that other Moors
came riding to see what had happened, and marvelled at the sight and
sound of the dance, and, praising Allah, leapt down and tore strips of
bells from their own saddles, and danced as nearly as they could in
mimicry of that glad conqueror, to Allah's glory.

As this scene is mobled in the aforesaid mists of antiquity, I cannot
vouch for the details. Nor can I say just when the Moors found that
they could make a finer and more rhythmic jangle by attaching the bells
to their legs than by swinging them in their hands. Nor can I fix the
day when they tore strips from their turbans for their idle hands to
wave. I cannot say how long the rite's mode had been set when first the
adventurers from Spain beheld it with their keen wondering eyes and
fixed it for ever in their memories.

In Spain, and then in France, and then in London, the dance was
secular. But perhaps I ought not to have said that it was 'not
explicitly religious' in the English countryside. The cult for Robin
Hood was veritably a religion throughout the Midland Counties. Rites in
his honour were performed on certain days of the year with a not less
hearty reverence, a not less quaint elaboration, than was infused into
the rustic Greek rites for Dionysus. The English carles danced, not
indeed around an altar, but around a bunt pole crowned with such
flowers as were in season; and one of them, like the youth who in the
Dionysiac dance masqueraded as the god, was decked out duly as Robin
Hood--'with a magpye's plume to hys capp,' we are told, and sometimes
'a russat bearde compos'd of horses hair.' The most famous of the
dances for Robin Hood was the 'pageant.' Herein appeared, besides the
hero himself and various tabours and pipers, a 'dysard' or fool, and
Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian--'in a white kyrtele and her hair all
unbrayded, but with blossoms thereyn.' This 'pageant' was performed at
Whitsun, at Easter, on New-Year's day, and on May-day. The Morris, when
it had become known in the villages, was very soon incorporated in the
'pageant.' The Morris