Ch. 24. Alia etiam iuvenum exercitatio est, ut certa lege arcualem choream ducant et reducant, aliis quidam instrumentis, sed eadem ut gladiatorum saltantium disciplina reducta. Arcubus enim seu circulis inclusis [inclusi?], primum modesto cantu heroum gesta referente vel tibiis aut tympanis excitati, gyrando incedunt seque dirigentis, qui rex dicitur, sola voce reducunt, tandem solutis arcubus aliquantulum celerius properantes mutua inclinatione conficiunt, veluti alias per gladios, rosam, ut formam sexangularem efficere videantur. Utque id festivius sonoriusque fiat, tintinnabula seu aereas campanulas genu tenus ligant. II. SHETLAND (_Eighteenth Century_). [From Sir Walter Scott’s _Diary_ for August 7, 1814, printed in Lockhart, _Life of Scott_ (1837), iii. 162; (1878) i. 265.] At Scalloway my curiosity was gratified by an account of the sword-dance, now almost lost, but still practised in the Island of Papa, belonging to Mr. Scott. There are eight performers, seven of whom represent the Seven Champions of Christendom, who enter one by one with their swords drawn, and are presented to the eighth personage, who is not named. Some rude couplets are spoken (in _English_, not _Norse_), containing a sort of panegyric upon each champion as he is presented. They then dance a sort of cotillion, as the ladies described it, going through a number of evolutions with their swords. One of my three Mʳˢ. Scotts readily promised to procure me the lines, the rhymes, and the form of the dance.... A few years since a party of Papa-men came to dance the sword-dance at Lerwick as a public exhibition with great applause.... In a stall pamphlet, called the history of Buckshaven [Fifeshire], it is said those fishers sprung from Danes, and brought with them their _war-dance_ or _sword-dance_, and a rude wooden cut of it is given. [A footnote by Lockhart adds:—] Mr. W. S. Rose informs me that, when he was at school at Winchester, the morris-dancers there used to exhibit a sword-dance resembling that described at Camacho’s wedding in _Don Quixote_; and Mr. Morritt adds that similar dances are even yet performed in the villages about Rokeby [Yorks, N.R.] every Christmas. [The following account was inserted in a note to Scott’s _The Pirate_ (1821).]