In order to prepare for these fêtes, dances, ballets and processions, the Lisbon folk had decorated, several days beforehand, big masts erected at the doors of the churches where the service was to be held, and at different places on the roads where the processions and performances would pass. “These masts were of pine, gilded and decked with crowns, streamers and banners of different colours, similar to the masts put up in France at the doors of the magistrates’ houses on the first of May in several towns of the kingdom, a custom which has given to these masts the name of ‘Maypole.’ The Spaniards call them ‘Mayos,’ or ‘_Arboles de Enamorados_’ (Lovers’ trees) because young men plant them on the first of May at the door of their mistresses’ houses.” The procession passed through triumphant arches, and the streets were hung with tapestries and strewn with flowers. Three masts were planted at the places of the actual performance, one at the spot at the port where the procession was to start after the landing of the image of St. Charles, another in the middle of the route, and the third at the door of the church where the procession was to end, and where the image of the saint was to be placed. These masts marked the places for the performances, for it was there the procession stopped, and the dancers made their chief entrances in the “ballet.” Needless to say immense sums were spent on the fête. These are but two instances of the _ballet-ambulatoire_. More might be given, but these will suffice to afford some idea of a type of spectacle which the older historians speak of as a “ballet,” but which is of special interest to us by reason of the contrast it forms to the masque, which was the reverse of “ambulatory,” and from the fact that though in direct contrast on another score, namely, that it was not a private but a public spectacle, it was under the “immediate patronage” of the Church! Neither the masque nor the _ballet-ambulatoire_, was yet a theatrical entertainment; but it is curious, is it not, to note that they had a certain kinship with theatrical tradition, for these magnificent peripatetic “ballets” of the ecclesiastics had had a primitive forerunner in the performance of Thespis with his travelling car in Grecian towns and villages some six centuries before the Christian era! Even as, later, we in fourteenth-century England had our Mystery and Miracle plays travelling from “station” to “station” in similar fashion, and our “mummers” or mimers; while, on the other hand, the masque itself, as a private entertainment of the English Court, with its stage, and “machines,” scenery, dancing, music and song, not to mention its Royal and Courtly audience, was forerunner of similar entertainments which a century later were to become the features of the Courts of Louis XIV and XV, and from that to develop under Royal Patronage into the Ballet of the Theatre. CHAPTER X COURT BALLETS ABROAD: 1609-1650