another a baker, and
the rest were farm-labourers. And their fathers and their fathers'
fathers had danced here before them, even so, every May-day morning.
They were as deeply rooted in antiquity as the elm outside the inn.
They were here always in their season as surely as the elm put forth
its buds. And the elm, knowing them, approving them, let its
green-flecked branches dance in unison with them.

The first dance was in full swing when I approached. Only six of the
men were dancers. Of the others, one was the 'minstrel,' the other the
'dysard.' The minstrel was playing a flute; and the dysard I knew by
the wand and leathern bladder which he brandished as he walked around,
keeping a space for the dancers, and chasing and buffeting merrily any
man or child who ventured too near. He, like the others, wore a white
smock decked with sundry ribands, and a top-hat that must have belonged
to his grandfather. Its antiquity of form and texture contrasted
strangely with the freshness of the garland of paper roses that
wreathed it. I was told that the wife or sweetheart of every
Morris-dancer takes special pains to deck her man out more gaily than
his fellows. But this pious endeavour had defeated its own end. So
bewildering was the amount of brand-new bunting attached to all these
eight men that no matron or maiden could for the life of her have
determined which was the most splendid of them all. Besides his
adventitious finery, every dancer, of course, had in his hands the
scarves which are as necessary to his performance of the Morris as are
the bells strapped about the calves of his legs. Waving these scarves
and jangling these bells with a stolid rhythm, the six peasants danced
facing one another, three on either side, while the minstrel fluted and
the dysard strutted around. That minstrel's tune runs in my head even
now--a queer little stolid tune that recalls vividly to me the aspect
of the dance. It is the sort of tune Bottom the Weaver must often have
danced to in his youth. I wish I could hum it for you on paper. I wish
I could set down for you on paper the sight that it conjures up. But
what writer that ever lived has been able to write adequately about a
dance? Even a slow, simple dance, such as these peasants were
performing, is a thing that not the cunningest writer could fix in
words. Did not Flaubert say that if he could describe a valse he would
die happy? I am sure he would have said this if it had occurred t