To old Irish, Scotch and English folk-dances belong the ‘All in a Garden Green,’ ‘Buckingham House,’ ‘Dargason,’ ‘Heartsease,’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons.’ They are all graceful and dignified, but depict more the English middle class or nobility than the people. Thus in the ‘All in a Garden Green’ the man begins by shaking the hand of his lady partner and kissing her twice, which was rather the custom of the fashionable ballroom than of a puritan people. They all give the impression of a refinement of manners that belongs more to the early French social dances than to the folk-dances of a heavy and realistic race. We know how the English high society and court imitated the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so it is only natural that it accepted with certain modifications the French social dances. IV It seems like a paradox that a country which gave to the world the classic ballet in the modern sense, Noverre, Blasis and Vestris, never produced any folk-dances of such racial flavor as we find in many other nations. The old French Rustic Dances, ‘Rounds,’ _Bourrées_, the Breton Dances, and the _Farandole_, betray only in certain figures the characteristics of the French race; otherwise they make the impression of a pleasing and polished bourgeois art. The _Ronde_, considered as the first form of French folk-dances, being performed in circles by taking each other by the hand, is to be found among races like the Finns, Esthonians, Letts and Lithuanians, as we read from the old epics of these nations. Thus we read in the _Kalewipoeg_ that ring dances--_ringi tants_--of eleventh-century Esthonians were practically of the same order as the French _Rondes_. The Greeks had ‘Rounds,’ so had other ancient civilized races. An old French dance is the _Bourrée_ of Auvergne. It is said to be a shepherd dance originally; but Catherine de Medici introduced it at court and polished out all the heavy, simple and characteristic traits of the people. From that time it has figured as a semi-fashionable dance danced in the society. Bach, Gluck, Handel, and many others since have either composed _Bourrées_ or treated _Bourrée_ themes in their orchestral compositions. Originally the _Bourrée_ was a simple mimic dance of the peasants. The woman moved round the man as if to tease him. He advanced and returned, glanced at her and ignored her. In the meanwhile she continued her flirting. Then the man snapped his finger, stamped his foot and gave an expression of his masculinity. That induced her to yield, and the dance stopped--only to begin anew.