rable fetes in honor of their favorite saints, for
which the little city was almost continually decorated. Passion plays
and mysteries culminated at Easter in a wild carnival week in which
priests and people sang and danced together in masks and parti-color
from dawn to starlight. In the fete called _Jeu des Rois_, a parade in
costume was led by a crowned king in scarlet robes, accompanied by his
fool, by his knights and his minstrels. Music and dancing and feats of
arms were followed by a religious ceremony, and at night-fall after the
play, the king's banquet, where white-bearded magi offered him gifts of
gold and silver goblets, of frankincense and myrrh, finished the revel.

[Illustration: LACE-MAKERS]

Or again on the first Sunday in May all would assemble for the sport
called _Chateau d'Amour_ of ancient Celtic origin. In the midst of a
green field or in the square before the _Hotel de Ville_, a wooden
fortress was erected, surrounded by a little moat and with high towers
and a donjon. Maidens and more maidens, smiling and flower-crowned and
with white arms outstretched, poured down a rain of arrows and wooden
lances from the battlements, or oftener pelted their lovers the
assailants with showers of roses. Then at a given signal, in a sudden
escalade, the besiegers broke over the walls, each to receive a kiss and
a rose as prize of victory. Then besiegers and besieged together burned
the fortress, and the day ended with bacchic libations and with dances.
Meeting by moonlight nights to sing their love songs and rhymed legends
in the city square, the Gruyere people better loved their dances, the
long Celtic Korols (or Coraules), when, singing in chorus in wild
winding farandoles, they went dancing over vales and hills, day in and
day out until human strength could bear no more. Such was the famous
dance quaintly recounted in ancient French by a Gruyere chronicler.

"It happened one day that the Count de Gruyere returning to his castle,
found thereby a great merry-making of young lads and maidens dancing in
Koraule. The same Count, greatly loving of such sport, forthwith took
the hand of the loveliest of the maidens and joined the company.
Whereupon, no one tiring, they proceeded, dancing always, through the
hard-by village of Enney up to Chateau D'Oex in the Pays-d'en-Haut, and
wonderful was it to see the people in all the villages they passed
joining in that joyous band. Seven hundred were they when they finished,