A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County)
About noon they return, carrying flowers and branches, and a procession
of dancing couples is formed at the Town Hall; and this proceeds down
the town, dancing in at the front door of every house and out at the
back, and so along their way, with a band preceding them, performing
the traditional Furry Dance tune, which is not of any remarkable age,
being a hornpipe. The dancers first trip in couples, hand in hand,
during the first part of the tune, forming a string of from thirty to
forty couples, or perhaps more; at the second part of the tune the
first gentleman turns, with both hands, the lady behind him, and her
partner turns in like manner as the first lady; then each gentleman
turns his own partner, and they trip on as before. The other couples
pair and turn in the same way and at the same time.
It is considered a slight to pass a house and not to dance through it.
Finally the train enters the Assembly Room, and there resolves itself
into an ordinary waltz.
As soon as the first party has finished another goes through the same
evolutions, and then another, and so on; and it is not till late at
night that the town returns to its peaceful propriety.
The dancers on the first day are the gentlemen and ladies. The servants
go through the same proceedings on the morrow.
I have given both the song and tune in my _Songs of the West_.
A few years ago the celebration was discontinued; but this provoked
such dissatisfaction that it was revived with fresh zest.
The visitor to Helston may see an occasional pixy pot on a roof-ridge
of an old house. This is a bulbous ornament, on which the pixies are
supposed to dance, and in dancing drop luck on the house below.
Loe Pool is the largest lake in Cornwall; the only other is Dozmare.
It is a beautiful sheet of fresh water cut off from the sea by a
pebble ridge, which it was wont to overflow, but a culvert has been
bored through the rocks to enable the Cober to discharge without, as
formerly, rising and inundating the land below Helston.
It is really marvellous to see how the mesembryanthemum flourishes
here, throwing up masses of pink and white blossom.
In the neighbourhood it is fondly dreamed that this was the tarn into
which Arthur had Excalibur cast.
“On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water----”
After the sword had been cast in, hither Arthur was carried by Sir
Bedivere.
“To left and right
The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag, that rang
Sharp smitten with the dint of armed heels--
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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