that, upon the showing of the tract entitled
Tarleton's "News from Purgatory," jigs usually lasted for an hour. The
precise nature of these entertainments cannot now be ascertained; for
although each jig had what may be called its _libretto_, which was
duly printed and published when the popularity of the work so
required, yet no specimen of any such performance is now extant. The
Stationers' registers, however, contain entries in 1595 of two jigs
described respectively as Phillips's "Jig of the Slippers," and
Kempe's "Jig of the Kitchen-stuff Woman." Other jigs referred to by
contemporary writers are "The Jig of the Ship" and "The Jig of
Garlick." It may be assumed, therefore, that each jig possessed
special characteristics in the nature of distinct plot and characters;
but in what respects "The Jig of the Kitchen-stuff Woman," let us say,
differed from "The Jig of Garlick," or what was the precise story
either was supposed to narrate, we must now be content to leave to the
conjecture of the curious.

Probably dancing, as a dramatic entertainment, first came upon our
stage in the form of these jigs. Of course, as a means of recreation
among all ranks of people, it had thriven since a very remote period.
Into the question of the state of dancing prior to the invention of
any method of denoting by signs or characters the length or duration
of sounds, we need scarcely enter. Doubtless music was felt and
appreciated by a sort of instinct long before it was understood
scientifically, or duly measured out and written down upon a
recognised system. If dancing is to be viewed as dependent upon its
correspondence with mensurable music, it must date simply from the
invention of the Cantus Mensurabilis, attributed by some writers to
Franco, the scholastic of Liege, who flourished in the eleventh
century; and by others to Johannes de Muris, doctor of Sorbonne and a
native of England, at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

There were dances of the court and dances of the people. The Morris
dance, which seems to have been an invention of the Moors, had firmly
established itself in England in the sixteenth century. The country
dance was even of earlier date. The old Roundel or Roundelay has been
described by ancient authorities as an air appropriate to dancing, and
would indicate little more than a circular dance with the hands
joined. Among the nobler and statelier dances in vogue at the court of
the Tudors, were the Pavan (