Of a very spectacular character are the Sword Dances, which bear a stamp of high antiquity. During the mythologic era they may have been practised as war dances, as we find similar ones practised by all primitive tribes. The history of all nations speaks of sword dances of some kind. There is to be seen in the Berlin Museum a picture from the seventeenth century that shows two double rings of dancers in white shirts, holding up on a frame of interlaced swords two swordsmen clad entirely in colors. There are also, separately, seven sword-dancers, six in white shirts, the first only clothed in red, like one of the swordsmen. They dance in file toward the left, each sloping his own sword back over his left shoulder and grasping the sword-point of the men next in front of him. The last man only shoulders his sword. In England there seem to have been six principal sword dances, three long and three short. The long-sword dance of Yorkshire requires six men dancers, the Captain, and the Fool. These are accompanied by a musician who plays either a fiddle, bagpipe or accordion. The dancers wear red tunics, cut soldier fashion and trimmed with white braid down the front and around the collar and sleeves; white trousers with a red stripe an inch or more wide down the side of each leg; brown canvas shoes, and tightly fitting cricket caps, quartered in red and white. Each dancer carries a sword; the leader, an ordinary military weapon, and the others swords forged by a village blacksmith. The Captain wears a blue coat of flowered cloth, ordinary trousers and a peaked cap of white flannel. He used to carry a drum, slung round his waist, upon which he accompanied the dance tunes. The Fool used to wear a cocked hat, decorated with peacock feathers. He wore a dinner-bell and a fox’s tail attached to the back buckle of his trousers, and he used to run among the spectators making humorous exclamations. The steps, a kind of leisurely tramp, or jog-trot, fall on the first and middle beats of each bar of the music, and the tramp of the feet should synchronize with the rhythm of the tune. The dancers move slowly round in a ring, clockwise, stepping in time with the music and clashing their swords together on the first and middle beats of each bar of the first strain of the music. The swords are held points up, hilts level with the chin, the blades nearly vertical, forming a cone immediately above the centre of the circle. Each dancer places his sword over his left shoulder and grasps the sword-point belonging to the dancer in front of him. He then faces the centre of the ring, passes his sword over his head and lets his arms fall naturally to his sides. The dance consists of eight different figures. In the last figure the dancers draw close together, linked by their swords, each crossing his right hand well over his head. Each man then drops the tip of his neighbor’s sword and, using both his hands, presses the hilt of his own sword under the point of