| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
CUSHION DANCE |
||
|
illustrated by the different versions, and the connection of the dance with the ceremony of marriage is obvious. A curious account of the merry-makings at marriages is given in Cover-dale's Christen State of Matrimony\ 1543: " After the banket and feast there beginneth a mad and unmannerly fashion ; for the bride must be brought into an open dauncing-place. Then is there such a running, leaping, and flinging among them that a man might think all these dauncers had cast all shame behinde them, and were become starke mad, and out of their wits, and that they were sworne to the devil's daunce. Then must the bride keep foote with all dauncers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, drunken, rude, and shameless soever he be. . . . After supper must they begin to pipe and daunce again of anew. And though the young persons come once towards their rest, yet can they have no quietness."—1575 edit., fol. 59, rev. 60. Edward L. Rimbault, writing in Notes and Queries) vi. 586, says it was formerly the custom at weddings, both of the rich as well as the poor, to dance after dinner and supper. In an old Court masque of James I.'s time, performed at the marriage ceremony of Philip Herbert and Lady Susan (MS. in the writer's possession), it is directed that, at the conclusion of the performance, u after supper" the company 11 dance a round dance." This was " dancing the bride to bed." William Chappell (Notes and Queries, ii. 442) says, " I have a tune called 'A round dance to dance the bride to bed.' It dates from about 1630, or earlier, and resembles that of 'The Hunt is up.'" Dancing was considered so essential at weddings (according to Grose) that if in a family the youngest daughter should chance to be married before her elder sisters, they must dance at her wedding without shoes. May not the custom of throwing of old and worn-out shoes after the bride have arisen from the practice of dancing ? The danced-out shoes may have been the ones used. It is curious that the cushion is used in the marriage ceremonies of the Brahmins. Mr. Kearns, in his Marriage Ceremonies of the Hindoos of the South of India, p. 6, says that a stool or cushion is one of the preparations for the reception of the bridegroom, who on entering the apartment sits down on the stool which is presented to him. He says, |
||
|
|
||