New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1910-12-15
DANCING OF OLDEN T|MES|
EnqIish Women Here to Tell OF
Ancient Peasant Steps.
RESULT OF LONG RESEARCH
British School Children Now
Taught Figures That Will Be
Shown in America.

you've knocked more into my girls cad
than hall tho learnin she's 'ad from the
board schools"
That was what one cockney told Miss
Mary G. g. Neal the instructor In dancing
for the British Educational Board. who,
with her assistant, Miss Florence Warren
has come to this country to tell Americans
about the English peasant dancers she has
rescued from the mists OF antiquity
Fifteen months ago the board sanctioned
the work Miss Neal had begun nearly four
years before that, and since then she and
her helpers have taught hundreds OF Gle
mentary teachers the figures she has picked
up, bit by bit, in out Of the way English
villages. figures which have been handed
down from generation to generation, since
no one knows how long.
But one thing is certain, the begin
nings OF some of them antedate Christian
times" Miss Neal told a Tribune reporter
yesterday. They are full OF traces of
pagan ceremonials Of which the old, old
Inhabitants found. who dimly remembered
dancing them in their youth. didn't under
stand the meaning. Of course, but which
are there.
"One old man In a Yorkshire village,
elshty-four he was, described to mo the
Morris dances in which he had joined sixty
years before. The Lord and the Lady of
tho village always headed these dances, IN
which the men danced by themselves and
the women by themselves. That typif1ed
the masculine and feminine principle in
nature. Always on the longest day Of the
year these dances were given. and when
they began a young girl was brought out,
who must be pure as snow. the old York
shirenlan said; and if any man jostled her
during the day he was fined half a crown.
I think that in pagan times this girl was
sacrificed when evening came, but in my
1orkshireman's youth that ceremony was
omitted.
THE old man was very stiff in his joints,
but he managed to show me a few steps of
the Morris dances, and the rest l cleaned
here and there"
All Miss Meals interest in dancing began
in a club she formed for working girls and
boys in London, in 1905. Thinking she
would like to teach them some old peasant
dances. she hunted about till in Oxford
shire she found a family of brickiayers
who varied their prosaic Occupation by
dancing figures passed down by a great
grandfather. She took them to London to
teach her club. Then she gave a big chill
dren's party, and the peasant dancing Of
the girls and boys so captured every one
that Miss Neal and Miss Warren were be-
sieged to go forth into the provinces and
teach.
1T is wonderful how it spreads from
class to class" Miss Neal said yesterday.
Lady Beauchamp asked US to teach her
village children. Her own children came
just to look on. but they couldn't keep out
loV ai With he
little villagers.
Lord Lytton told me of coming up behind
a little girl in the village street. and she
was chanting to herself. lone, two, three
hop and doing the steps there alone. But
it is the London children whom the dane
ing helps most. One stunted girl who
had absolutely stopped growing began
again when taught the dances and became
a normal sized child
One OF the oldest dances in the thirty or
more which Miss Neal and Miss Warren
teach is the Bean Setting one. accom-
panied by ceremonials which In pagan
times were designed to keep evil spirits
away from the fields.
at is a very pretty dance; the English
were more poetic than they are now,' Miss
Neal said sorrowfully. They don't plant
with song and music now, but with a ma
chine run by steam 1t was the Puritans
who put end to the village revels, of
which dancing formed SO large a part. And
the Puritans were right for the dances
had Exaggerated into drinking and fight
ing bouts largely. We're trying to revive
them without the drinking and fghting.''
On December 20, at fete to be given by
the MacDowell Club. Miss Warren. who is
~ ha
lecturer, will show what a genuine Eng
lish morris dance is Miss Neal says she
does not see how the English peasant
dances hitherto taught in America can be
genuine, for she is sure she was the first
to dig them out from the byways Of the
mother country.
Miss Neal and Miss Warren will spend
four months in America, and will lecture
and dance in various cities. In the spring
they will take some Of their Englis pupils
to appear in the exhibition of dancing at