"ONCE I LOVED A MAIDEN FAIR."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 96, 22 April 1904, Page 2

"ONCE I LOVED A MAIDEN FAIR."

SOME DANCES WHICH WERE SUPPRESSED. The vicar of a Roman Catholic church in London has been accused of calling Irish dances immodest. It is a grievous charge, and one that Mr William O'Brien in his peaceful retirement might set his patriotic mind to settle, ln the particular case to which we refer the charge was no doubt elicited by the fact that the dances were held in an adjoining hall during church service. And it will strike most people that in such circvßnstances an Irish jig under full steam must sound, whatever it may appear, somewhat immoral. The truth is that terpsichorean and religious exercises do not go well together, and if the former be a Hibernian jig or a Highland reel, the incongruity is peculiarly emphatic. At one time or another dancing in nearly every country excites the active opposition of the earnest religionists. During the Puritan regime, for instance, "Come, kiss mc now," " Tolly Polly," "Once I loved a maiden fair," "All in a garden green," as some of the jolly dances of the previous period were named, were severely repressed, only to be revived again in perhaps less desirable forms at the Restoration. Dancing afterwards became "polite," and even the portly Dr. Johnson was to be seen at the fashionable "crushes" of his day. In our own time humanity may be divided into three classes—dancing-haters, "wall flowers," and cake walkers. The last undoubtedly are in an overwhelming majority. On the whole, however, the English dance has been peculiarly happy and harmless. We have never had the Zarabanda. Like the English ballads, our dances have been domestic and homely; they have been only remotely "connected with the "poetry of motion." We have had to look for that to Southern and Eastern climes. Among the Celtic people, with whom emotion 13 everything, the dance becomes the expression of feeling, and thus it is'apt to offend those who take a severe view of things. The jig may interpret lamentation or ecstatic joy, and in any I case is apt to become boisterous. The j Scottish Highlanders have certain purely aesthetic dances, attractive to look j upon, and singular in the intricacy of | their "steps," but they have also what an Aberdeen divine once called "closebosomed whirling." Oddly enough, the Welsh have no national dances, and apparently they don't want others to hnve any either. At a recent National Eisteddfod certain Highland delegates had the audacity to indulge in a fling, which raised such a protest from the "unco quid" as might have led the dancers to imagine that they had got for an audience a choice selection of "Elders at the plate." The Welsh folk were, in fact, doing exactly what many a severely Puritanical Scotsman has done and will do again. The domination of the strict type of religionist in Scotland nearly resulted in the extinction of the national dances, and within recent years the question whether a man who tripped the heel and then the toe was a fit person to take part in the .ommunion service was gravely discussed in one of the church courts, and disposed of in an oracular resolution which left things where they were. It is probably impossible to eradicate this antagonism which, indeed, is often excited by the lengths to which, by certain communities, the craze for dancing is carried.