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92 CUSHION DANCE
which concludes with all dancing round three times, as at the commencement.
The Norfolk and London versions are reduced to a simple " Kiss in the Ring" game, with the following verse :—
Round the cushion we dance with glee,
Singing songs so merrily ;
Round the cushion we dance with glee,
Singing songs so merrily;
Yet the punishment you must bear
If you touch the cushion there. .
—Sporle, Norfolk (Miss Matthews).
(c) Selden, in his Table Talk, thus refers to this game:— " The Court of England is much altered. At a solemn dancing first you have the grave measures, then the Cervantoes and the Golliards, and this is kept up with ceremony. At length to Trenchmore and the Cushion Dance ; and then all the company dance, lord and groom, lady and kitchen-maid, no distinction. But in King Charles's time there has been nothing but Trenchmore and the Cushion Dance," &c. The " Whishin Dance " (an old-fashioned dance, in which a cushion is used to kneel upon), mentioned by Dickinson (Cumberland Glossary), is probably the same game or dance, "whishin" meaning cushion. Brockett (North Country Words) mentions " Peas Straw," the final dance at a rustic party; something similar to the ancient " Cushion Dance " at weddings. It is also recorded in Evans' Leicestershire Glossary, and by Burton in the following passage from the Anatomy of Melancholy: "A friend of his reprehended him for dancing beside his dignity, belike at some cushen dance." In the version from East Kirkby, Lincolnshire, the expression " in our degree " in the first line of the verse is apparently meaningless, and it is probably a corruption of "highdigees, highdegrees," a dialect word for roystering, high spirits, merriment, dancing, romping. Elworthy (Somerset Words) gives this word, and quotes the following line from Drayton:—
Dance many a merry round and many a highdegy.
—Polyolbion, Bk. xxv., 1. 1162. (d) The transition from a dance to a pure game is well |
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