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PROGRAMMING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
WITH

PYTHON
 About the Authors

Ashok Namdev Kamthane is a retired Associate Professor of the Department

of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, S. G. G. S. Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Nanded, Maharashtra, India. An academic with
37 years of teaching experience, he has authored more than a dozen books and
presented several technical papers at national and international conferences.
He has earned a first class in ME (Electronics) from S. G. G. S. College of
Engineering and Technology. His ME dissertation work from Bhabha Atomic
Research Center, Trombay, Mumbai, was on development of the hardware and
software using 8051 (8-bit microcontroller) Acoustic Transceiver System required in submarines.

Amit Ashok Kamthane is a Research Assistant at National Centre for Aerospace

Innovation and Research, IIT Bombay. In the past, he was associated as a
lecturer with S. G. G. S. Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded and
as an Assistant Professor with P. E. S Modern College, Pune. He completed his
ME (Computer Science and Engineering) from M. G. M. College of Engineering
and BE (Computer Science and Engineering) in first class from G. H. Raisoni
College of Engineering, Pune. A computer programming enthusiast, he also
imparts corporate training.
PROGRAMMING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
WITH

PYTHON
Ashok Namdev Kamthane
Retired Associate Professor
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Shri Guru Gobind Singhji Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded
Maharashtra, India

Amit Ashok Kamthane

Research Assistant
IIT Bombay
Maharashtra, India

McGraw Hill Education (India) Private Limited

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 Dedicated to

Sow Surekha Ashok Kamthane

(Mother of Amit Ashok Kamthane)
 Preface

It gives us immense pleasure to bring the book ‘Programming and Problem Solving with Python’. The
book is intended for the students in initial years of engineering and mathematics who can use this
high-level programming language as an effective tool in mathematical problem solving. Python is
used to develop applications of any stream and it is not restricted only to computer science.
We believe that anyone who has basic knowledge of computer and ability of logical thinking can
learn programming. With this motivation, we have written this book in a lucid manner. Once you
go through the book, you will know how simple the programming language is and at the same
time you will learn the basics of python programming. You will feel motivated enough to develop
applications using python.
Since this book has been written with consideration that reader has no prior knowledge of
python programming, before going through all the chapters, reader should know what are the
benefits of learning python programming. Following are some of the reasons why one should
learn python language.
• Python language is simple and easy to learn. For example, it has simple syntax compared to
other programming languages.
• Python is an object-oriented programming language. It is used to develop desktop, standalone
and scripting applications.
• Python is also an example of free open source software. Due to its open nature one can write
programs and can deploy on any of platform, i.e., (Windows, Linux, Ubuntu and Mac OS),
without changing the original program.
Thus, due to the features enlisted above, python has become the most popular language and is
widely used among programmers.

Use of Python in Engineering Domains

Computer Engineering
Python is used in computer engineering
• To develop web applications
• By data scientists to analyse large amount of data
• In automation testing
viii Preface

• To develop GUI-based applications, cryptography and network security and many more
applications
Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering and Electrical Engineering
• Image processing applications can be developed by using python’s ‘scikit-image’ library
• Widely used in developing embedded applications
• Develop IOT applications using Arduino and Raspberry pi
Python can also be used in other engineering streams such as mechanical, chemical, and
bioinformatics to perform complex calculations by making use of numpy, scipy, and pandas library.
Thus, the end user of this book can be anyone who wants to learn basics of python programming.
To learn the basics, the student can be of any stream/any engineering/Diploma/BCA/MCA
background and interested to develop applications using python.

Organization of the Book

The book is organized into two parts. The first part covers fundamentals of computer programming
while the second part covers topics related to object-oriented programming and some basic topics
on data structures.
In the first part of the book, the readers will learn about basics of computer, basics of python
programming, executing python programs on various operating systems (Chapter 1), data
types used in python, assignments, formatting numbers and strings (Chapter 2) operators and
expressions (Chapter 3), decision statements (Chapter 4), loop control statements (Chapter 5) and
functions (Chapter 6).
In the second part, the readers will be introduced to creation of classes and objects. The concept
of creating list and strings using classes are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. Reader will also
become aware of basic topics of data structures, i.e. searching and sorting (Chapter 9) since it is
one of the most important concept and used in almost all real-world applications. Various concepts
and features of object-oriented programming such as inheritance, accessibility, i.e. encapsulation
have been covered in Chapter 10. Chapter 11 comprises one of the major important data structures
of python, i.e. tuples, sets and dictionaries in great detail whereas Chapter 12 explains graphics
creation using turtle. Finally, Chapter 13 will help the readers to understand the need of file
handling and develop real-time applications based on it. Thus, after going through the second
part of the book, the readers will be in a position to create a software application by considering
flexibility, and reusability.

Online Learning Centre

The text is supported by additional content which can be accessed from the weblink
http://www.mhhe.com/kamthane/python. The weblink comprises
• Problems for practice
• Solutions Manual (for Instructors and Students)
• PPTs
• Useful web links for further reading
 Preface ix

In the end, we would like to express gratitude to all our well-wishers and readers, whose
unstinted support and encouragement has kept us going as a teacher and author of this book. Any
suggestion regarding the improvement of the book will be highly appreciated.

ASHOK NAMDEV K AMTHANE

AMIT ASHOK K AMTHANE

Publisher’s Note
McGraw-Hill Education (India) invites suggestions and comments from you, all of which can be
sent to info.india@mheducation.com (kindly mention the title and author name in the subject line).
Piracy-related issues may also be reported.
 Visual W

All chapters within the book have been structured into the following important pedagogical
components:

Decision Statements
• Learning Outcomes give a clear idea to the 4
students and programmers on what they will
learn in each chapter. After completion of 4.1 Introduction
CHAPTER OUTLINE
4.6 Boolean Expressions and Relational
4.2 Boolean Type Operators
chapter, they will able to comprehend and apply 4.3
4.4
Boolean Operators
Using Numbers with Boolean Operators
4.7 Decision Making Statements
4.8 Conditional Expressions

all the objectives of the chapter. 4.5 Using String with Boolean Operators

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Introduction explains the basics of each topic After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

bool

and familiarizes the reader to the concept being Boolean Relational > <,>= <= !=

if
dealt with. if
if else

if-elif-else

conditional expressions

4.1 INTRODUCTION

Write a program to create a list with elements 1,2,3,4 and 5. Display even elements of the list
PROGRAM 8.1 using list comprehension.

List1=[1,2,3,4,5]
print(“Content of List1”)
print(List1)
List1=[x for x in List1 if x%2==0]
print(“Even elements from the List1”)
print(List1)
• Programs are the highlighting
Output Generate 50 random numbers within a range 500 to 1000 and write them to file
feature of the chapters. Ample
PROGRAM 13.3
Content of List1
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
WriteNumRandom.txt.

from random import randint # Import Random Module

programs have been provided
[2, 4]
fp1 = open(“WriteNumRandom.txt”,”w”) # Open file in write mode
for x in range(51): #Iterates for 50 times
against each sub topic to effectively
x = randint(500,1000) #Generate one random number
x = str(x) #Convert Number to String
strengthen the learnt concepts.
fp1.write(x + “ “) #Write Number to Output file
fp1.close() #Finish Writing Close the file

Output File
 Visual Walkthrough xi

• Mini Project consists of a problem MINI PROJECT Turtle Racing Game

statement that will compel the readers to three red green black

think and make use of various concepts

learnt to solve real-life problems through
programming.

Turtle Racing Track

penup(), pendown(),
forward(), right(), goto(), color(), shape(), speed() left()

Note: The del operator uses index to access the elements of a list. It gives a run time error if the index
• Notes have been inserted in each chapter
is out of range.
Example: to provide valuable insights based on
>>> del Lst[4]
Traceback (most recent call last):
programming concepts. Notes shall
File “<pyshell#37>”, line 1, in <module>
del Lst[4]
also act as precautionary statements for
IndexError: list assignment index out of range readers to solve programming problems
effectively.

SUMMARY
• A concise Summary has been listed at
chapter-end to reiterate vital points and
describes in short, the complex concepts
covered within the chapter.

• Key Terms enlists important keywords

and concepts covered within the chapter.
KEY TERMS

The def keyword:

Positional arguments:
• Extensive Review Questions presented Keyword arguments:
Local and global scope of a variable:

at the end of each chapter comprise The return keyword:

Lambda:

Multiple Choice Questions, True False REVIEW QUESTIONS

statements, Exercise Questions and
A. Multiple Choice Questions
Programming Assignments. This would
help in analyzing the learnt information.

x = 10
def f():
x= x + 10
print(x)
f()
 Acknowledgements

We would like to express deep sense of gratitude to Professor B. M. Naik, former Principal of
S. G. G. S. College of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, who constantly praised and inspired
us to write books on technical subjects and whose enthusiasm and guidance led us to write this
book.
Special thanks are also due to Dr. L. M. Waghmare, Director, S. G. G. S. Institute of Engineering
and Technology, Professor Dr. U. V. Kulkarni, HOD, CSE and Professor P. S. Nalawade of S. G. G. S.
Institute of Engineering and Technology Nanded for encouraging us to write this book on Python.
We are grateful to Professor Dr. Mrs. S. A. Itkar, HOD, CSE and Professor Mrs. Deipali V. Gore
of P. E. S. Modern College of Engineering Pune, for supporting us while writing the book. We
are also thankful to the staff members (Santosh Nagargoje, Nilesh Deshmukh, Kunnal Khadake,
Digvijay Patil and Sujeet Deshpande) of P. E. S. Modern College of Engineering for their valuable
suggestions.
Furthermore, we would like to thank our friends—ShriKumar P. Ugale and Navneet Agrawal—
for giving valuable inputs while writing the book. Also, we would like to thank our students—
Suraj K, Pranav C, and Prajyot Gurav—who offered comments, suggestions and praise while
writing the book.
We are thankful to the following reviewers for providing useful feedback and critical suggestions
during the development of the manuscript.

Vikram Goyal IIIT Delhi

Partha Pakray NIT, Mizoram
Harish Sharma RTU, Kota
Shreedhara K.S. University BDT College of Engineering, Karnataka
S. Rama Sree Aditya Engineering College, Andhra Pradesh
Sansar Singh Chauhan IEC-CET, Greater Noida

Lastly, we are indebted to our family members—Mrs. Surekha Kamthane (mother of Amit
Kamthane), Amol, Swarupa, Aditya, Santosh Chidrawar, Sangita Chidrawar, Sakshi and Sartak for
their love, support and encouragement.

ASHOK NAMDEV K AMTHANE

AMIT ASHOK K AMTHANE
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
attendants are accustomed to blacken their faces[505]. It may
perhaps be taken for granted that ‘riding the stang’ is an earlier form
of the punishment than the more delicate and symbolical
‘skimmington riding’; and it is probable that the rider represents a
primitive village criminal haled off to become the literal victim at a
sacrificial rite. The fine or forfeit by which in some cases the offence
can be purged seems to create an analogy between the custom
under consideration and other sacrificial survivals which must now
be considered. These are perhaps best treated in connexion with
Hock-tide and the curious play proper to that festival at
Coventry[506]. This play was revived for the entertainment of
Elizabeth when she visited the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in July,
1575, and there exists a description of it in a letter written by one
Robert Laneham, who accompanied the court, to a friend in
London[507]. The men of Coventry, led by one Captain Cox, who
presented it called it an ‘olld storiall sheaw,’ with for argument the
massacre of the Danes by Ethelred on Saint Brice’s night 1002[508].
Laneham says that it was ‘expressed in actionz and rymez,’ and it
appears from his account to have been a kind of sham fight or
‘barriers’ between two parties representing respectively Danish
‘launsknights’ and English, ‘each with allder poll marcially in their
hand[509].’ In the end the Danes were defeated and ‘many led
captiue for triumph by our English wéemen.’ The presenters also
stated that the play was of ‘an auncient beginning’ and ‘woont too
bee plaid in oour Citee yeárely.’ Of late, however, it had been ‘laid
dooun,’ owing to the importunity of their preachers, and ‘they woold
make theyr humbl peticion vntoo her highnes, that they myght haue
theyr playz vp agayn.’ The records of Coventry itself add but little to
what Laneham gathered. The local Annals, not a very trustworthy
chronicle, ascribe the invention of ‘Hox Tuesday’ to 1416-7, and
perhaps confirm the Letter by noting that in 1575-6 the ‘pageants on
Hox Tuesday’ were played after eight years[510]. We have seen that,
according to the statement made at Kenilworth, the event
commemorated by the performance was the Danish massacre of
1002. There was, however, another tradition, preserved by the
fifteenth-century writer John Rous, which connected it rather with
the sudden death of Hardicanute and the end of the Danish
usurpation at the accession of Edward the Confessor[511]. It is, of
course, possible that local cantilenae on either or both of these
events may have existed, and may have been worked into the
‘rymez’ of the play. But I think it may be taken for granted that, as in
the Lady Godiva procession, the historical element is comparatively a
late one, which has been grafted upon already existing festival
customs. One of these is perhaps the faction-fight just discussed.
But it is to be noticed that the performance as described by
Laneham ended with the Danes being led away captive by English
women; and this episode seems to be clearly a dramatization of a
characteristic Hock-tide ludus found in many places other than
Coventry. On Hock-Monday, the women ‘hocked’ the men; that is to
say, they went abroad with ropes, caught and bound any man they
came across, and exacted a forfeit. On Hock-Tuesday, the men
retaliated in similar fashion upon the women. Bishop Carpenter of
Worcester forbade this practice in his diocese in 1450[512], but like
some other festival customs it came to be recognized as a source of
parochial revenue, and the ‘gaderyngs’ at Hock-tide, of which the
women’s was always the most productive, figure in many a
churchwarden’s budget well into the seventeenth century[513]. At
Shrewsbury in 1549 ‘hocking’ led to a tragedy. Two men were
‘smothered under the Castle hill,’ hiding themselves from maids, the
hill falling there on them[514].’ ‘Hockney day’ is still kept at
Hungerford, and amongst the old-fashioned officers elected on this
occasion, with the hay-ward and the ale-tasters, are the two ‘tything
men’ or ‘tutti men,’ somewhat doubtfully said to be so named from
their poles wreathed with ‘tutties’ or nose-gays, whose function it is
to visit the commoners, and to claim from every man a coin and
from every woman a kiss[515]. The derivation of the term Hock-tide
has given rise to some wild conjectures, and philologists have failed
to come to a conclusion on the subject[516]. Hock-tide is properly the
Monday and Tuesday following the Second Sunday after Easter, and
‘Hokedaie’ or Quindena Paschae is a frequent term day in leases and
other legal documents from the thirteenth century onwards[517].
‘Hocking’ can be closely paralleled from other customs of the
spring festivals. The household books of Edward I record in 1290 a
payment ‘to seven ladies of the queen’s chamber who took the king
in bed on the morrow of Easter, and made him fine himself[518].’
This was the prisio which at a later date perturbed the peace of
French ecclesiastics. The council of Nantes, for instance, in 1431,
complains that clergy were hurried out of their beds on Easter
Monday, dragged into church, and sprinkled with water upon the
altar[519]. In this aggravated form the prisio hardly survived the
frank manners of the Middle Ages. But it was essentially identical
with the ceremonies in which a more modern usage has permitted
the levying of forfeits at both Pasque and Pentecost. In the north of
England, women were liable to have their shoes taken on one or
other of these feasts, and must redeem them by payment. On the
following day they were entitled to retaliate on the shoes of the
men[520]. A more widely spread method of exacting the droit is that
of ‘heaving.’ The unwary wanderer in some of the northern
manufacturing towns on Easter Monday is still liable to find himself
swung high in the air by the stalwart hands of factory girls, and will
be lucky if he can purchase his liberty with nothing more costly than
a kiss. If he likes, he may take his revenge on Easter Tuesday[521].
Another mediaeval custom described by Belethus in the twelfth
century, which prescribed the whipping of husbands by wives on
Easter Monday and of wives by husbands on Easter Tuesday, has
also its modern parallel[522]. On Shrove Tuesday a hockey match
was played at Leicester, and after it a number of young men took
their stand with cart whips in the precincts of the Castle. Any passer-
by who did not pay a forfeit was liable to lashes. The ‘whipping
Toms,’ as they were called, were put down by a special Act of
Parliament in 1847[523]. The analogy of these customs with the
requirement made of visitors to certain markets or to the roofs of
houses in the building to ‘pay their footing’ is obvious[524].
In all these cases, even where the significant whipping or
sprinkling is absent, the meaning is the same. The binding with
ropes, the loss of the shoes, the lifting in the air, are symbols of
capture. And the capture is for the purposes of sacrifice, for which
no more suitable victim, in substitution for the priest-king, than a
stranger, could be found. This will, I think, be clear by comparison
with some further parallels from the harvest field and the threshing-
floor, in more than one of which the symbolism is such as actually to
indicate the sacrifice itself, as well as the preliminary capture. In
many parts of England a stranger, and sometimes even the farmer
himself, when visiting a harvest field, is liable to be asked for
‘largess’[525]. In Scotland, the tribute is called ‘head-money,’ and he
who refuses is seized by the arms and feet and ‘dumped’ on the
ground[526]. Similar customs prevail on the continent, in Germany,
Norway, France; and the stranger is often, just as in the ‘hocking’
ceremony, caught with straw ropes, or swathed in a sheaf of corn. It
is mainly in Germany that the still more elaborate rites survive. In
various districts of Mecklenburg, and of Pomerania, the reapers form
a ring round the stranger, and fiercely whet their scythes, sometimes
with traditional rhymes which contain a threat to mow him down. In
Schleswig, and again in Sweden, the stranger in a threshing-floor is
‘taught the flail-dance’ or ‘the threshing-song.’ The arms of a flail are
put round his neck and pressed so tightly that he is nearly choked.
When the madder-roots are being dug, a stranger passing the field
is caught by the workers, and buried up to his middle in the soil[527].
The central incident of ‘hocking’ appears therefore to be nothing
but a form of that symbolical capture of a human victim of which
various other examples are afforded by the village festivals. The
development of the custom into a play or mock-fight at Coventry
may very well have taken place, as the town annals say, about the
beginning of the fifteenth century. Whether it had previously been
connected by local tradition with some event in the struggles of
Danes and Saxons or not, is a question which one must be content
to leave unsolved. A final word is due to the curious arrangement by
which in the group of customs here considered the rôles of
sacrificers and sacrificed are exchanged between men and women
on the second day; for it lends support to the theory already put
forward that a certain stage in the evolution of the village worship
was marked by the merging of previously independent sex-cults.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE MAY-GAME

[Bibliographical Note.—The festal character of primitive

dance and song is admirably brought out by R.
Wallaschek, Primitive Music (1893); E. Grosse, Die
Anfänge der Kunst (1894, French transl. 1902); Y. Hirn,
The Origins of Art (1900); F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings
of Poetry (1901). The popular element in French lyric is
illustrated by A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique
en France au Moyen Âge (1889), and J. Tiersot, Histoire
de la Chanson populaire en France (1889). Most of such
English material as exists is collected in Mrs. Gomme’s
Traditional Games (1896-8) and G. F. Northall, English
Folk-Rhymes (1892). For comparative study E.
Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs
(1886), may be consulted. The notices of the May-game
are scattered through the works mentioned in the
bibliographical note to ch. vi and others.]
The foregoing chapter has illustrated the remarkable variety of
modes in which the instinct of play comes to find expression. But of
all such the simplest and most primitive is undoubtedly the dance.
Psychology discovers in the dance the most rudimentary and
physical of the arts, and traces it to precisely that overflow of
nervous energies shut off from their normal practical ends which
constitutes play[528]. And the verdict of psychology is confirmed by
philology; for in all the Germanic languages the same word signifies
both ‘dance’ and ‘play,’ and in some of them it is even extended to
the cognate ideas of ‘sacrifice’ or ‘festival[529]’. The dance must
therefore be thought of as an essential part of all the festivals with
which we have to deal. And with the dance comes song: the
rhythms of motion seem to have been invariably accompanied by the
rhythms of musical instruments, or of the voice, or of both
combined[530].
The dance had been from the beginning a subject of contention
between Christianity and the Roman world[531]; but whereas the
dances of the East and South, so obnoxious to the early Fathers,
were mainly those of professional entertainers, upon the stage or at
banquets, the missionaries of the West had to face the even more
difficult problem of a folk-dance and folk-song which were amongst
the most inveterate habits of the freshly converted peoples. As the
old worship vanished, these tended to attach themselves to the new.
Upon great feasts and wake-days, choruses of women invaded with
wanton cantica and ballationes the precincts of the churches and
even the sacred buildings themselves, a desecration against which
generation after generation of ecclesiastical authorities was fain to
protest[532]. Clerkly sentiment in the matter is represented by a
pious legend, very popular in the Middle Ages, which told how some
reprobate folk of Kölbigk in Anhalt disobeyed the command of a
priest to cease their unholy revels before the church of Saint Magnus
while he said mass on Christmas day, and for their punishment must
dance there the year round without stopping[533]. The struggle was
a long one, and in the end the Church never quite succeeded even
in expelling the dance from its own doors. The chapter of Wells
about 1338 forbade choreae and other ludi within the cathedral and
the cloisters, chiefly on account of the damage too often done to its
property[534]. A seventeenth-century French writer records that he
had seen clergy and singing-boys dancing at Easter in the churches
of Paris[535]; and even at the present day there are some
astounding survivals. At Seville, as is well known, the six boys, called
los Seises, dance with castanets before the Holy Sacrament in the
presence of the archbishop at Shrovetide, and during the feasts of
the Immaculate Conception and Corpus Christi[536]. At Echternach in
Luxembourg there is an annual dance through the church of pilgrims
to the shrine of St. Willibrord[537], while at Barjols in Provence a
‘tripe-dance’ is danced at mass on St. Marcel’s day in honour of the
patron[538].
Still less, of course, did dance and song cease to be important
features of the secular side of the festivals. We have already seen
how cantilenae on the great deeds of heroes had their vogue in the
mouths of the chori of young men and maidens, as well as in those
of the minstrels[539]. The Carmina Burana describe the dances of
girls upon the meadows as amongst the pleasures of spring[540].
William Fitzstephen tells us that such dances were to be seen in
London in the twelfth century[541], and we have found the University
of Oxford solemnly forbidding them in the thirteenth. The romans
and pastourelles frequently mention chansons or rondets de carole,
which appear to have been the chansons used to accompany the
choric dances, and to have generally consisted of a series of
couplets sung by the leader, and a refrain with which the rest of the
band answered him. Occasionally the refrains are quoted[542]. The
minstrels borrowed this type of folk chanson, and the conjoint dance
and song themselves found their way from the village green to the
courtly hall. In the twelfth century ladies carolent, and more rarely
even men condescend to take a part[543]. Still later carole, like
tripudium, seems to become a term for popular rejoicing in general,
not necessarily expressed in rhythmical shape[544].
The customs of the village festival gave rise by natural
development to two types of dance[545]. There was the processional
dance of the band of worshippers in progress round their boundaries
and from field to field, from house to house, from well to well of the
village. It is this that survives in the dance of the Echternach
pilgrims, or in the ‘faddy-dance’ in and out the cottage doors at
Helston wake. And it is probably this that is at the bottom of the
interesting game of ‘Thread the Needle.’ This is something like
‘Oranges and Lemons,’ the first part of which, indeed, seems to have
been adapted from it. There is, however, no sacrifice or ‘tug-of-war,’
although there is sometimes a ‘king,’ or a ‘king’ and his ‘lady’ or
‘bride’ in the accompanying rhymes, and in one instance a ‘pancake.’
The players stand in two long lines. Those at the end of each line
form an arch with uplifted arms, and the rest run in pairs beneath it.
Then another pair form an arch, and the process is repeated. In this
way long strings of lads and lasses stream up and down the streets
or round and about a meadow or green. In many parts of England
this game is played annually on Shrove Tuesday or Easter Monday,
and the peasants who play it at Châtre in central France say that it is
done ‘to make the hemp grow.’ Its origin in connexion with the
agricultural festivals can therefore hardly be doubtful[546]. It is
probable that in the beginning the players danced rather than ran
under the ‘arch’; and it is obvious that the ‘figure’ of the game is
practically identical with one familiar in Sir Roger de Coverley and
other old English ‘country’ dances of the same type.
Just as the ‘country’ dance is derived from the processional
dance, so the other type of folk-dance, the ronde or ‘round,’ is
derived from the comparatively stationary dance of the group of
worshippers around the more especially sacred objects of the
festival, such as the tree or the fire[547]. The custom of dancing
round the May-pole has been more or less preserved wherever the
May-pole is known. But ‘Thread the Needle’ itself often winds up
with a circular dance or ronde, either around one of the players, or,
on festival occasions, around the representative of the earlier home
of the fertilization divinity, the parish church. This custom is
popularly known as ‘clipping the church[548].’
Naturally the worshippers at a festival would dance in their
festival costume; that is to say, in the garb of leaves and flowers
worn for the sake of the beneficent influence of the indwelling
divinity, or in the hides and horns of sacrificial animals which served
a similar purpose. Travellers describe elaborate and beautiful beast-
dances amongst savage peoples, and the Greeks had their own
bear-and crane-dances, as well as the dithyrambic goat-dance of the
Dionysia. They had also flower dances[549]. In England the village
dancers wear posies, but I do not know that they ever attempt a
more elaborate representation of flowers. But a good example of the
beast-dance is furnished by the ‘horn-dance’ at Abbots Bromley in
Staffordshire, held now at a September wake, and formerly at
Christmas. In this six of the performers wear sets of horns. These
are preserved from year to year in the church, and according to local
tradition the dance used at one time to take place in the churchyard
on a Sunday. The horns are said to be those of the reindeer, and
from this it may possibly be inferred that they were brought to
Abbots Bromley by Scandinavian settlers. The remaining performers
represent a hobby-horse, a clown, a woman, and an archer, who
makes believe to shoot the horned men[550].
The motifs of the dances and their chansons must also at first
have been determined by the nature of the festivals at which they
took place. There were dances, no doubt, at such domestic festivals
as weddings and funerals[551]. In Flanders it is still the custom to
dance at the funeral of a young girl, and a very charming chanson is
used[552]. The development of epic poetry from the cantilenae of the
war-festival has been noted in a former chapter. At the agricultural
festivals, the primary motif is, of course, the desire for the fertility of
the crops and herds. The song becomes, as in the Anglo-Saxon
charm, so often referred to, practically a prayer[553]. With this, and
with the use of ‘Thread the Needle’ at Châtre ‘to make the hemp
grow,’ may be compared the games known to modern children, as to
Gargantua, in which the operations of the farmer’s year, and in
particular his prayer for his crops, are mimicked in a ronde[554].
Allusions to the process of the seasons, above all to the delight of
the renouveau in spring, would naturally also find a place in the
festival songs. The words of the famous thirteenth-century lyric were
perhaps written to be sung to the twinkling feet of English girls in a
round. It has the necessary refrain:

‘Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
 And springth the wdë nu,
Sing cuccu!

‘Awë bleteth after lomb,

Lhouth after calvë cu.
Bulloc sterteth, buckë verteth,
Murie sing cuccu!

‘Cuccu, cuccu, wel singës thu, cuccu;

Ne swik thu naver nu.
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!’[555]

The savour of the spring is still in the English May songs, the
French maierolles or calendes de mai and the Italian calen di
maggio. But for the rest they have either become little but mere
quête songs, or else, under the influence of the priests, have taken
on a Christian colouring[556]. At Oxford the ‘merry ketches’ sung by
choristers on the top of Magdalen tower on May morning were
replaced in the seventeenth century by the hymn now used[557].
Another very popular Mayers’ song would seem to show that the
Puritans, in despair of abolishing the festival, tried to reform it.

‘Remember us poor Mayers all,

And thus we do begin
To lead our lives in righteousness,
Or else we die in sin.

‘We have been rambling all this night,

And almost all this day:
And now returned back again,
We have brought you a branch of May.

‘A branch of May we have brought you,

And at your door it stands;
 It is but a sprout, but it’s well budded out,
By the work of our Lord’s hands,’ &c.[558]

Another religious element, besides prayer, may have entered into the
pre-Christian festival songs; and that is myth. A stage in the
evolution of drama from the Dionysiac dithyramb was the
introduction of mythical narratives about the wanderings and
victories of the god, to be chanted or recited by the choragus. The
relation of the choragus to the chorus bears a close analogy to that
between the leader of the mediaeval carole and his companions who
sang the refrain. This leader probably represents the Keltic or
Teutonic priest at the head of his band of worshippers; and one may
suspect that in the north and west of Europe, as in Greece, the
pauses of the festival dance provided the occasion on which the
earliest strata of stories about the gods, the hieratic as distinguished
from the literary myths, took shape. If so the development of divine
myth was very closely parallel to that of heroic myth[559].
After religion, the commonest motif of dance and song at the
village festivals must have been love. This is quite in keeping with
the amorous licence which was one of their characteristics. The
goddess of the fertility of earth was also the goddess of the fertility
of women. The ecclesiastical prohibitions lay particular stress upon
the orationes amatoriae and the cantica turpia et luxuriosa which the
women sang at the church doors, and only as love-songs can be
interpreted the winileodi forbidden to the inmates of convents by a
capitulary of 789[560]. The love-interest continues to be prominent in
the folk-song, or the minstrel song still in close relation to folk-song,
of mediaeval and modern France. The beautiful wooing chanson of
Transformations, which savants have found it difficult to believe not
to be a supercherie, is sung by harvesters and by lace-makers at the
pillow[561]. That of Marion, an ironic expression of wifely submission,
belongs to Shrove Tuesday[562]. These are modern, but the
following, from the Chansonnier de St. Germain, may be a genuine
mediaeval folk-song of Limousin provenance:
 ‘A l’entrada dal tems clar, eya,
Per joja recomençar, eya,
Et per jelos irritar, eya,
Vol la regina mostrar
Qu’el’ es si amoroza.
Alavi’, alavia jelos,
Laissaz nos, laissaz nos
Ballar entre nos, entre nos[563].’

The ‘queen’ here is, of course, the festival queen or lady of the May,
the regina avrillosa of the Latin writers, la reine, la mariée,
l’épousée, la trimousette of popular custom[564]. The defiance of the
jelos, and the desire of the queen and her maidens to dance alone,
recall the conventional freedom of women from restraint in May, the
month of their ancient sex-festival, and the month in which the
mediaeval wife-beater still ran notable danger of a chevauchée.
The amorous note recurs in those types of minstrel song which
are most directly founded upon folk models. Such are the chansons
à danser with their refrains, the chansons de mal mariées, in which
the ‘jalous’ is often introduced, the aubes and the pastourelles[565].
Common in all of these is the spring setting proper to the chansons
of our festivals, and of the ‘queen’ or ‘king’ there is from time to time
mention. The leading theme of the pastourelles is the wooing,
successful or the reverse, of a shepherdess by a knight. But the
shepherdess has generally also a lover of her own degree, and for
this pair the names of Robin and Marion seem to have been
conventionally appropriated. Robin was perhaps borrowed by the
pastourelles from the widely spread refrain

‘Robins m’aime, Robins m’a:

Robins m’a demandée: si m’ara[566].’
The borrowing may, of course, have been the other way round, but
the close relation of the chanson à danser with its refrain to the
dance suggests that this was the earliest type of lyric minstrelsy to
be evolved, as well as the closest to the folk-song pattern. The
pastourelle forms a link between folk-song and drama, for towards
the end of the thirteenth century Adan de la Hale, known as ‘le
Bossu,’ a minstrel of Arras, wrote a Jeu de Robin et Marion, which is
practically a pastourelle par personnages. The familiar theme is
preserved. A knight woos Marion, who is faithful to her Robin.
Repulsed, he rides away, but returns and beats Robin. All, however,
ends happily with dances and jeux amongst the peasants. Adan de
la Hale was one of the train of Count Robert of Artois in Italy. The
play may originally have been written about 1283 for the delectation
of the court of Robert’s kinsman, Charles, king of Naples, but the
extant version was probably produced about 1290 at Arras, when
the poet was already dead. Another hand has prefixed a dramatic
prologue, the Jeu du Pèlerin, glorifying Adan, and has also made
some interpolations in the text designed to localize the action near
Arras. The performers are not likely to have been villagers: they may
have been the members of some puy or literary society, which had
taken over the celebration of the summer festival. In any case the
Jeu de Robin et Marion is the earliest and not the least charming of
pastoral comedies[567].
It is impossible exactly to parallel from the history of English
literature this interaction of folk-song and minstrelsy at the French
fête du mai. For unfortunately no body of English mediaeval lyric
exists. Even ‘Sumer is icumen in’ only owes its preservation to the
happy accident which led some priest to fit sacred words to the
secular tune; while the few pieces recovered from a Harleian
manuscript of the reign of Edward I, beautiful as they are, read like
adaptations less of English folk-song, than of French lyric itself[568].
Nevertheless, the village summer festival of England seems to have
closely resembled that of France, and to have likewise taken in the
long run a dramatic turn. A short sketch of it will not be without
interest.
 I have quoted at the beginning of this discussion of folk-customs
the thirteenth-century condemnations of the Inductio Maii by Bishop
Grosseteste of Lincoln and of the ludi de Rege et Regina by Bishop
Chanteloup of Worcester. The ludus de Rege et Regina is not indeed
necessarily to be identified with the Inductio Maii, for the harvest
feast or Inductio Autumni of Bishop Grosseteste had also its ‘king’
and ‘queen,’ and so too had some of the feasts in the winter cycle,
notably Twelfth night[569]. It is, however, in the summer feast held
usually on the first of May or at Whitsuntide[570], that these rustic
dignitaries are more particularly prominent. Before the middle of the
fifteenth century I have not come across many notices of them. That
a summer king was familiar in Scotland is implied by the jest of
Robert Bruce’s wife after his coronation at Scone in 1306[571]. In
1412 a ‘somerkyng’ received a reward from the bursar of Winchester
College[572]. But from about 1450 onwards they begin to appear
frequently in local records. The whole ludus is generally known as a
‘May-play’ or ‘May-game,’ or as a ‘king-play[573],’ ‘king’s revel[574],’ or
‘king-game[575].’ The leading personages are indifferently the ‘king’
and ‘queen,’ or ‘lord’ and ‘lady.’ But sometimes the king is more
specifically the ‘somerkyng’ or rex aestivalis. At other times he is the
‘lord of misrule[576],’ or takes a local title, such as that of the ‘Abbot
of Marham,’ ‘Mardall,’ ‘Marrall,’ ‘Marram,’ ‘Mayvole’ or ‘Mayvoll’ at
Shrewsbury[577], and the ‘Abbot of Bon-Accord’ at Aberdeen[578].
The use of an ecclesiastical term will be explained in a later
chapter[579]. The queen appears to have been sometimes known as
a ‘whitepot’ queen[580]. And finally the king and queen receive, in
many widely separated places, the names of Robin Hood and Maid
Marian, and are accompanied in their revels by Little John, Friar
Tuck, and the whole joyous fellowship of Sherwood Forest[581]. This
affiliation of the ludus de Rege et Regina to the Robin Hood legend
is so curious as to deserve a moment’s examination[582].
The earliest recorded mention of Robin Hood is in Langland’s
Piers Plowman, written about 1377. Here he is coupled with another
great popular hero of the north as a subject of current songs:

‘But I can rymes of Robyn hood, and Randolf erle of

Chestre[583].’

In the following century his fame as a great outlaw spread far and
wide, especially in the north and the midlands[584]. The Scottish
chronicler Bower tells us in 1447 that whether for comedy or tragedy
no other subject of romance and minstrelsy had such a hold upon
the common folk[585]. The first of the extant ballads of the cycle, A
Gest of Robyn Hode, was probably printed before 1500, and in
composition may be at least a century earlier. A recent investigator
of the legend, and a very able one, denies to Robin Hood any
traceable historic origin. He is, says Dr. Child, ‘absolutely a creation
of the ballad muse.’ However this may be, the version of the
Elizabethan playwright Anthony Munday, who made him an earl of
Huntingdon and the lover of Matilda the daughter of Lord Fitzwater,
may be taken as merely a fabrication. And whether he is historical or
not, it is difficult to see how he got, as by the sixteenth century he
did get, into the May-game. One theory is that he was there from
the beginning, and that he is in fact a mythological figure, whose
name but faintly disguises either Woden in the aspect of a
vegetation deity[586], or a minor wood-spirit Hode, who also survives
in the Hodeken of German legend[587]. Against this it may be
pointed out, firstly that Hood is not an uncommon English name,
probably meaning nothing but ‘à-Wood’ or ‘of the wood[588],’ and
secondly that we have seen no reason to suppose that the mock
king, which is the part assigned to Robin Hood in the May-game,
was ever regarded as an incarnation of the fertilization spirit at all.
He is the priest of that spirit, slain at its festival, but nothing more. I
venture to offer a more plausible explanation. It is noticeable that
whereas in the May-game Robin Hood and Maid Marian are
inseparable, in the early ballads Maid Marian has no part. She is
barely mentioned in one or two of the latest ones[589]. Moreover
Marian is not an English but a French name, and we have already
seen that Robin and Marion are the typical shepherd and
shepherdess of the French pastourelles and of Adan de la Hale’s
dramatic jeu founded upon these. I suggest then, that the names
were introduced by the minstrels into English and transferred from
the French fêtes du mai to the ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ of the corresponding
English May-game. Robin Hood grew up independently from heroic
cantilenae, but owing to the similarity of name he was identified with
the other Robin, and brought Little John, Friar Tuck and the rest with
him into the May-game. On the other hand Maid Marian, who does
not properly belong to the heroic legend, was in turn, naturally
enough, adopted into the later ballads. This is an hypothesis, but
not, I think, an unlikely hypothesis.
Of what, then, did the May-game, as it took shape in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, consist? Primarily, no doubt, of a
quête or ‘gaderyng.’ In many places this became a parochial, or even
a municipal, affair. In 1498 the corporation of Wells possessed
moneys ‘provenientes ante hoc tempus de Robynhode[590].’
Elsewhere the churchwardens paid the expenses of the feast and
accounted for the receipts in the annual parish budget[591]. There
are many entries concerning the May-game in the accounts of
Kingston-on-Thames during some half a century. In 1506 it is
recorded that ‘Wylm. Kempe’ was ‘kenge’ and ‘Joan Whytebrede’ was
‘quen.’ In 1513 and again in 1536 the game went to Croydon[592].
Similarly the accounts of New Romney note that in 1422 or
thereabouts the men of Lydd ‘came with their may and ours[593],’
and those of Reading St. Lawrence that in 1505 came ‘Robyn Hod of
Handley and his company’ and in 1507 ‘Robyn Hod and his company
from ffynchamsted[594].’ In contemporary Scotland James IV gave a
present at midsummer in 1503 ‘to Robin Hude of Perth[595].’ It
would hardly have been worth while, however, to carry the May-
game from one village or town to another, had it been nothing but a
procession with a garland and a ‘gaderyng’; and as a matter of fact
we find that in England as in France dramatic performances came to
be associated with the summer folk-festivals. The London ‘Maying’
included stage plays[596]. At Shrewsbury lusores under the Abbot of
Marham acted interludes ‘for the glee of the town’ at Pentecost[597].
The guild of St. Luke at Norwich performed secular as well as
miracle plays, and the guild of Holy Cross at Abingdon held its feast
on May 3 with ‘pageants, plays and May-games,’ as early as
1445[598]. Some of these plays were doubtless miracles, but so far
as they were secular, the subjects of them were naturally drawn, in
the absence of pastourelles, from the ballads of the Robin Hood
cycle[599]. Amongst the Paston letters is preserved one written in
1473, in which the writer laments the loss of a servant, whom he
has kept ‘thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the
Shryff off Nottyngham[600].’ Moreover, some specimens of the plays
themselves are still extant. One of them, unfortunately only a
fragment, must be the very play referred to in the letter just quoted,
for its subject is ‘Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham,’ and it is
found on a scrap of paper formerly in the possession of Sir John
Fenn, the first editor of the Paston Letters[601]. A second play on
‘Robin Hood and the Friar’ and a fragment of a third on ‘Robin Hood
and the Potter’ were printed by Copland in the edition of the Gest of
Robyn Hode published by him about 1550[602]. The Robin Hood
plays are, of course, subsequent to the development of religious
drama which will be discussed in the next volume. They are of the
nature of interludes, and were doubtless written, like the plays of
Adan de la Hale, by some clerk or minstrel for the delectation of the
villagers. They are, therefore, in a less degree folk-drama, than the
examples which we shall have to consider in the next chapter. But it
is worthy of notice, that even in the hey-day of the stage under
Elizabeth and James I, the summer festival continued to supply
motives to the dramatists. Anthony Munday’s Downfall and Death of
Robert Earl of Huntingdon[603], Chapman’s May-Day, and Jonson’s
delightful fragment The Sad Shepherd form an interesting group of
pastoral comedies, affinities to which may be traced in the As You
Like It and Winter’s Tale of Shakespeare himself.
 As has been said, it is impossible to establish any direct affiliation
between the Robin Hood plays and earlier caroles on the same
theme, in the way in which this can be done for the jeu of Adan de
la Hale, and the Robin and Marion of the pastourelles. The extant
Robin Hood ballads are certainly not caroles; they are probably not
folk-song at all, but minstrelsy of a somewhat debased type. The
only actual trace of such caroles that has been come across is the
mention of ‘Robene hude’ as the name of a dance in the Complaynt
of Scotland about 1548[604]. Dances, however, of one kind or
another, there undoubtedly were at the May-games. The Wells
corporation accounts mention puellae tripudiantes in close relation
with Robynhode[605]. And particularly there was the morris-dance,
which was so universally in use on May-day, that it borrowed, almost
in permanence, for its leading character the name of Maid Marian.
The morris-dance, however, is common to nearly all the village
feasts, and its origin and nature will be matter for discussion in the
next chapter.
In many places, even during the Middle Ages, and still more
afterwards, the summer feast dropped out or degenerated. It
became a mere beer-swilling, an ‘ale[606].’ And so we find in the
sixteenth century a ‘king-ale[607]’ or a ‘Robin Hood’s ale[608],’ and in
modern times a ‘Whitsun-ale[609],’ a ‘lamb-ale[610]’ or a ‘gyst-
ale[611]’ beside the ‘church-ales’ and ‘scot-ales’ which the thirteenth-
century bishops had already condemned[612]. On the other hand,
the village festival found its way to court, and became a sumptuous
pageant under the splendour-loving Tudors. For this, indeed, there
was Arthurian precedent in the romance of Malory, who records how
Guenever was taken by Sir Meliagraunce, when ‘as the queen had
mayed and all her knights, all were bedashed with herbs, mosses,
and flowers, in the best manner and freshest[613].’ The chronicler
Hall tells of the Mayings of Henry VIII in 1510, 1511, and 1515. In
the last of these some hundred and thirty persons took part. Henry
was entertained by Robin Hood and the rest with shooting-matches
and a collation of venison in a bower; and returning was met by a
chariot in which rode the Lady May and the Lady Flora, while on the
five horses sat the Ladies Humidity, Vert, Vegetave, Pleasaunce and
Sweet Odour[614]. Obviously the pastime has here degenerated in
another direction. It has become learned, allegorical, and pseudo-
classic. At the Reformation the May-game and the May-pole were
marks for Puritan onslaught. Latimer, in one of his sermons before
Edward VI, complains how, when he had intended to preach in a
certain country town on his way to London, he was told that he
could not be heard, for ‘it is Robyn hoodes daye. The parishe are
gone a brode to gather for Robyn hoode[615].’ Machyn’s Diary
mentions the breaking of a May-pole in Fenchurch by the lord mayor
of 1552[616], and the revival of elaborate and heterogeneous May-
games throughout London during the brief span of Queen Mary[617].
The Elizabethan Puritans renewed the attack, but though something
may have been done by reforming municipalities here and there to
put down the festivals[618], the ecclesiastical authorities could not be
induced to go much beyond forbidding them to take place in
churchyards[619]. William Stafford, indeed, declared in 1581 that
‘May-games, wakes, and revels’ were ‘now laid down[620],’ but the
violent abuse directed against them only two years later by Philip
Stubbes, which may be taken as a fair sample of the Puritan polemic
as a whole, shows that this was far from being really the case[621].
In Scotland the Parliament ordered, as early as 1555, that no one
‘be chosen Robert Hude, nor Lytill Johne, Abbot of vnressoun,
Quenis of Maij, nor vtherwyse, nouther in Burgh nor to landwart in
ony tyme to cum[622].’ But the prohibition was not very effective, for
in 1577 and 1578 the General Assembly is found petitioning for its
renewal[623]. And in England no similar action was taken until 1644
when the Long Parliament decreed the destruction of such May-
poles as the municipalities had spared. Naturally this policy was
reversed at the Restoration, and a new London pole was erected in
the Strand, hard by Somerset House, which endured until 1717[624].
 CHAPTER IX
THE SWORD-DANCE

[Bibliographical Note.—The books mentioned in the

bibliographical note to the last chapter should be
consulted on the general tendency to μίμησις in festival
dance and song. The symbolical dramatic ceremonies of
the renouveau are collected by Dr. J. G. Frazer in The
Golden Bough. The sword-dance has been the subject of
two elaborate studies: K. Müllenhoff, Ueber den
Schwerttanz, in Festgaben für Gustav Homeyer (1871), iii,
with additions in Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum, xviii.
9, xx. 10; and F. A. Mayer, Ein deutsches Schwerttanzspiel
aus Ungarn (with full bibliography), in Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie (1889), 204, 416. The best accounts of
the morris-dance are in F. Douce, Illustrations of
Shakespeare (1807, new ed. 1839), and A. Burton,
Rushbearing (1891), 95.]
The last two chapters have afforded more than one example of
village festival customs ultimately taking shape as drama. But
neither the English Robin Hood plays, nor the French Jeu de Robin et
Marion, can be regarded as folk-drama in the proper sense of the
word. They were written not by the folk themselves, but by
trouvères or minstrels for the folk; and at a period when the
independent evolution of the religious play had already set a model
of dramatic composition. Probably the same is true of the Hox
Tuesday play in the form in which we may conjecture it to have been
presented before Elizabeth late in the sixteenth century.
Nevertheless it is possible to trace, apart from minstrel intervention
and apart from imitation of miracles, the existence of certain
embryonic dramatic tendencies in the village ceremonies themselves.
Too much must not be made of these. Jacob Grimm was inclined to
find in them the first vague beginnings of the whole of modern
drama[625]. This is demonstrably wrong. Modern drama arose, by a
fairly well defined line of evolution, from a threefold source, the
ecclesiastical liturgy, the farce of the mimes, the classical revivals of
humanism. Folk-drama contributed but the tiniest rill to the mighty
stream. Such as it was, however, a couple of further chapters may
be not unprofitably spent in its analysis.
The festival customs include a number of dramatic rites which
appear to have been originally symbolical expressions of the facts of
seasonal recurrence lying at the root of the festivals themselves. The
antithesis of winter and summer, the renouveau of spring, are
mimed in three or four distinct fashions. The first and the most
important, as well as the most widespread of these, is the mock
representation of a death or burial. Dr. Frazer has collected many
instances of the ceremony known as the ‘expulsion of Death[626].’
This takes place at various dates in spring and early summer, but
most often on the fourth Sunday in Lent, one of the many names of
which is consequently Todten-Sonntag. An effigy is made, generally
of straw, but in some cases of birch twigs, a beechen bough, or
other such material. This is called Death, is treated with marks of
fear, hatred or contempt, and is finally carried in procession, and
thrust over the boundary of the village. Or it is torn in pieces, buried,
burnt, or thrown into a river or pool. Sometimes the health or other
welfare of the folk during the year is held to depend on the rite
being duly performed. The fragments of Death have fertilizing
efficacy for women and cattle; they are put in the fields, the
mangers, the hens’ nests. Here and there women alone take part in
the ceremony, but more often it is common to the whole village. The
expulsion of Death is found in various parts of Teutonic Germany,
but especially in districts such as Thuringia, Bohemia, Silesia, where
the population is wholly or mainly Slavonic. A similar custom, known
both in Slavonic districts and in Italy, France, and Spain, had the
name of ‘sawing the old woman.’ At Florence, for instance, the effigy
of an old woman was placed on a ladder. At Mid Lent it was sawn
through, and the nuts and dried fruits with which it was stuffed
scrambled for by the crowd. At Palermo there was a still more
realistic representation with a real old woman, to whose neck a
bladder of blood was fitted[627].
The ‘Death’ of the German and Slavonic form of the custom has
clearly come to be regarded as the personification of the forces of
evil within the village; and the ceremony of expulsion may be
compared with other periodical rites, European and non-European,
in which evil spirits are similarly expelled[628]. The effigy may even
be regarded in the light of a scapegoat, bearing away the sins of the
community[629]. But it is doubtful how far the notion of evil spirits
warring against the good spirits which protect man and his crops is a
European, or at any rate a primitive European one[630]; and it may
perhaps be taken for granted that what was originally thought to be
expelled in the rite was not so much either ‘Death’ or ‘Sin’ as winter.
This view is confirmed by the evidence of an eighth-century homily,
which speaks of the expulsion of winter in February as a relic of
pagan belief[631]. Moreover, the expulsion of Death is often found in
the closest relation to the more widespread custom of bringing
summer, in the shape of green tree or bough, into the village. The
procession which carries away the dead effigy brings back the
summer tree; and the rhymes used treat the two events as
connected[632].
The homily just quoted suggests that the mock funeral or
expulsion of winter was no new thing in the eighth century. On the
other hand, it can hardly be supposed that customs which imply
such abstract ideas as death, or even as summer and winter, belong
to the earliest stages of the village festival. What has happened is
what happens in other forms of festival play. The instinct of play, in
this case finding vent in a dramatic representation of the succession
of summer to winter, has taken hold of and adapted to its own
purposes elements in the celebrations which, once significant, have
gradually come to be mere traditional survivals. Such are the
ceremonial burial in the ground, the ceremonial burning, the
ceremonial plunging into water, of the representative of the
fertilization spirit. In particular, the southern term ‘the old woman’
suggests that the effigy expelled or destroyed is none other than the
‘corn mother’ or ‘harvest-May,’ fashioned to represent the fertilization
spirit out of the last sheaf at harvest, and preserved until its place is
taken by a new and green representative in the spring.
There are, however, other versions of the mock death in which
the central figure of the little drama is not the representative of the
fertilization spirit itself, but one of the worshippers. In Bavaria the
Whitsuntide Pfingstl is dressed in leaves and water-plants with a cap
of peonies. He is soused with water, and then, in mimicry, has his
head cut off. Similar customs prevail in the Erzgebirge and
elsewhere[633]. We have seen this Pfingstl before. He is the Jack in
the green, the worshipper clad in the god under whose protection he
desires to put himself[634]. But how can the killing of him symbolize
the spring, for obviously it is the coming summer, not the dying
winter, that the leaf-clad figure must represent? The fact is that the
Bavarian drama is not complete. The full ceremony is found in other
parts of Germany. Thus in Saxony and Thuringia a ‘wild man’
covered with leaves and moss is hunted in a wood, caught, and
executed. Then comes forward a lad dressed as a doctor, who brings
the victim to life again by bleeding[635]. Even so annually the
summer dies and has its resurrection. In Swabia, again, on Shrove
Tuesday, ‘Dr. Eisenbart’ bleeds a man to death, and afterwards
revives him. This same Dr. Eisenbart appears also in the Swabian
Whitsuntide execution, although here too the actual resurrection
seems to have dropped out of the ceremony[636]. It is interesting to
note that the green man of the peasantry, who dies and lives again,
reappears as the Green Knight in one of the most famous divisions
of Arthurian romance[637].
The mock death or burial type of folk-drama resolves itself, then,
into two varieties. In one, it is winter whose passing is represented,
and for this the discarded harvest-May serves as a nucleus. In the
other, which is not really complete without a resurrection, it is
summer, whose death is mimed merely as a preliminary to its joyful
renewal; and this too is built up around a fragment of ancient cult in
the person of the leaf-clad worshipper, who is, indeed, none other
than the priest-king, once actually, and still in some sort and show,
slain at the festival[638]. In the instances so far dealt with, the
original significance of the rite is still fairly traceable. But there are
others into which new meanings, due to the influence of Christian
custom, have been read. In many parts of Germany customs closely
analogous to those of the expulsion of winter or Death take place on
Shrove Tuesday, and have suffered metamorphosis into ‘burial of the
Carnival[639].’ England affords the ‘Jack o’ Lent’ effigy which is taken
to represent Judas Iscariot[640], the Lincoln ‘funeral of Alleluia[641],’
the Tenby ‘making Christ’s bed[642],’ the Monkton ‘risin’ and buryin’
Peter[643].’ The truth that the vitality of a folk custom is far greater
than that of any single interpretation of it is admirably illustrated.
Two other symbolical representations of the phenomena of the
renouveau must be very briefly treated. At Briançon in Dauphiné,
instead of a death and resurrection, is used a pretty little May-day
drama, in which the leaf-clad man falls into sleep upon the ground
and is awakened by the kiss of a maiden[644]. Russia has a similar
custom; and such a magic kiss, bringing summer with it, lies at the
heart of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Indeed, the marriage of
heaven and earth seems to have been a myth very early invented by
the Aryan mind to explain the fertility of crops beneath the rain, and
it probably received dramatic form in religious ceremonies both in
Greece and Italy[645]. Finally, there is a fairly widespread spring
custom of holding a dramatic fight between two parties, one clad in
green to represent summer, the other in straw or fur to represent
winter. Waldron describes this in the Isle of Man[646]; Olaus Magnus
in Sweden[647]. Grimm says that it is found in various districts on
both sides of the middle Rhine[648]. Perhaps both this dramatic
battle and that of the Coventry Hox Tuesday owe their origin to the
struggle for the fertilizing head of a sacrificial animal, which also
issued in football and similar games. Dr. Frazer quotes several
instances from all parts of the world in which a mock fight, or an
interchange of abuse and raillery taking the place of an actual fight,
serves as a crop-charm[649]. The summer and winter battle gave to
literature a famous type of neo-Latin and Romance débat[650]. In
one of the most interesting forms of this, the eighth-or ninth-century
Conflictus Veris et Hiemis, the subject of dispute is the cuckoo,
which spring praises and winter chides, while the shepherds declare
that he must be drowned or stolen away, because summer cometh
not. The cuckoo is everywhere a characteristic bird of spring, and his
coming was probably a primitive signal for the high summer
festival[651].
The symbolical dramas of the seasons stand alone and
independent, but it may safely be asserted that drama first arose at
the village feasts in close relation to the dance. That dancing, like all
the arts, tends to be mimetic is a fact which did not escape the
attention of Aristotle[652]. The pantomimes of the decadent Roman
stage are a case in point. Greek tragedy itself had grown out of the
Dionysiac dithyramb, and travellers describe how readily the dances
of the modern savage take shape as primitive dramas of war,
hunting, love, religion, labour, or domestic life[653]. Doubtless this
was the case also with the caroles of the European festivals. The
types of chanson most immediately derived from these are full of
dialogue, and already on the point of bursting into drama. That they
did do this, with the aid of the minstrels, in the Jeu de Robin et de
Marion we have seen[654]. A curious passage in the Itinerarium
Cambriae of Giraldus Cambrensis ( † 1188) describes a dance of
peasants in and about the church of St. Elined, near Brecknock on
the Gwyl Awst, in which the ordinary operations of the village life,
such as ploughing, sewing, spinning were mimetically
represented[655]. Such dances seem to survive in some of the
rondes or ‘singing-games,’ so frequently dramatic, of children[656].
On the whole, perhaps, these connect themselves rather with the
domestic than with the strictly agricultural element in village cult. A
large proportion of them are concerned with marriage. But the
domestic and the agricultural cannot be altogether dissociated. The
game of ‘Nuts in May,’ for instance, seems to have as its kernel a
reminiscence of marriage by capture; but the ‘nuts’ or rather ‘knots’
or ‘posies’ ‘in May’ certainly suggest a setting at a seasonal festival.
So too, with ‘Round the Mulberry Bush.’ The mimicry here is of
domestic operations, but the ‘bush’ recalls the sacred tree, the
natural centre of the seasonal dances. The closest parallels to the
dance described by Giraldus Cambrensis are to be found in the
rondes of ‘Oats and Beans and Barley’ and ‘Would you know how
doth the Peasant?’, in which the chief, though not always the only,
subjects of mimicry are ploughing, sowing and the like, and which
frequently contain a prayer or aspiration for the welfare of the
crops[657].
I have treated the mimetic element of budding drama in the
agricultural festivals as being primarily a manifestation of the
activities of play determined in its direction by the dominant
interests of the occasion, and finding its material in the débris of
ritual custom left over from forgotten stages of religious thought. It
is possible also to hold that the mimesis is more closely interwoven
with the religious and practical side of the festivals, and is in fact yet
another example of that primitive magical notion of causation by the
production of the similar, which is at the root of the rain-and sun-
charms. Certainly the village dramas, like the other ceremonies
which they accompany, are often regarded as influencing the luck of
the farmer’s year; just as the hunting-and war-dances of savages are
often regarded not merely as amusement or as practice for actual
war and hunting, but as charms to secure success in these
pursuits[658]. But it does not seem clear to me that in this case the
magical efficacy belongs to the drama from the beginning, and I
incline to look upon it as merely part of the sanctity of the feast as a
whole, which has attached itself in the course of time even to that
side of it which began as play.
 The evolution of folk-drama out of folk-dance may be most
completely studied through a comparison of the various types of
European sword-dance with the so-called ‘mummers’,’ ‘guisers’,’ or
‘Pace-eggers’’ play of Saint George. The history of the sword-dance
has received a good deal of attention from German archaeologists,
who, however, perhaps from imperfect acquaintance with the English
data, have stopped short of the affiliation to it of the play[659]. The
dance itself can boast a hoar antiquity. Tacitus describes it as the
one form of spectaculum to be seen at the gatherings of the
Germans with whom he was conversant. The dancers were young
men who leapt with much agility amongst menacing spear-points
and sword-blades[660]. Some centuries later the use of sweorda-
gelac as a metaphor for battle in Beowulf shows that the term was
known to the continental ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons[661]. Then
follows a long gap in the record, bridged only by a doubtful
reference in an eighth-century Frankish homily[662], and a possible
representation in a ninth-century Latin and Anglo-Saxon
manuscript[663]. The minstrels seem to have adopted the sword-
dance into their repertory[664], but the earliest mediaeval notice of it
as a popular ludus is at Nuremberg in 1350. From that date onwards
until quite recent years it crops up frequently, alike at Shrovetide,
Christmas and other folk festivals, and as an element in the revels at
weddings, royal entries, and the like[665]. It is fairly widespread
throughout Germany. It is found in Italy, where it is called the
mattaccino[666], and in Spain (matachin), and under this name or
that of the danse des bouffons it was known both in France and
England at the Renaissance[667]. It is given by Paradin in his Le
Blason des Danses and, with the music and cuts of the performers,
by Tabourot in his Orchésographie (1588)[668]. These are the
sophisticated versions of courtly halls. But about the same date
Olaus Magnus describes it as a folk-dance, to the accompaniment of
pipes or cantilenae, in Sweden[669]. In England, the main area of the
acknowledged sword-dance is in the north. It is found, according to
Mr. Henderson, from the Humber to the Cheviots; and it extends as
far south as Cheshire and Nottinghamshire[670]. Outlying examples
are recorded from Winchester[671] and from Devonshire[672]. In
Scotland Sir Walter Scott found it among the farthest Hebrides, and
it has also been traced in Fifeshire[673].
The name of danse des bouffons sometimes given to the sword-
dance may be explained by a very constant feature of the English
examples, in which the dancers generally include or are
accompanied by one or more comic or grotesque personages. The
types of these grotesques are not kept very distinct in the
descriptions, or, probably, in fact. But they appear to be
fundamentally two. There is the ‘Tommy’ or ‘fool,’ who wears the
skin and tail of a fox or some other animal, and there is the ‘Bessy,’
who is a man dressed in a woman’s clothes. And they can be
paralleled from outside England. A Narr or Fasching (carnival fool) is
a figure in several German sword-dances, and in one from Bohemia
he has his female counterpart in a Mehlweib[674].
With the cantilenae noticed by Olaus Magnus may be compared
the sets of verses with which several modern sword-dances, both in
these islands and in Germany, are provided. They are sung before or
during part of the dances, and as a rule are little more than an
introduction of the performers, to whom they give distinctive names.
If they contain any incident, it is generally of the nature of a quarrel,
in which one of the dancers or one of the grotesques is killed. To this
point it will be necessary to return. The names given to the
characters are sometimes extremely nondescript; sometimes, under
a more or less literary influence, of an heroic order. Here and there a
touch of something more primitive may be detected. Five sets of
verses from the north of England are available in print. Two of these
are of Durham provenance. One, from Houghton-le-Spring, has,
besides the skin-clad ‘Tommy’ and the ‘Bessy,’ five dancers. These
are King George, a Squire’s Son also called Alick or Alex, a King of
Sicily, Little Foxey, and a Pitman[675]. The other Durham version has
a captain called True Blue, a Squire’s Son, Mr. Snip a tailor, a Prodigal
Son (replaced in later years by a Sailor), a Skipper, a Jolly Dog.
There is only one clown, who calls himself a ‘fool,’ and acts as
treasurer. He is named Bessy, but wears a hairy cap with a fox’s
brush pendent[676]. Two other versions come from Yorkshire. At
Wharfdale there are seven dancers, Thomas the clown, his son Tom,
Captain Brown, Obadiah Trim a tailor, a Foppish Knight, Love-ale a
vintner, and Bridget the clown’s wife[677]. At Linton in Craven there
are five, the clown, Nelson, Jack Tar, Tosspot, and Miser a
woman[678]. The fifth version is of unnamed locality. It has two
clowns, Tommy in skin and tail, and Bessy, and amongst the dancers
are a Squire’s Son and a Tailor[679]. Such a nomenclature will not
repay much analysis. The ‘Squire,’ whose son figures amongst the
dancers, is identical with the ‘Tommy,’ although why he should have
a son I do not know. Similarly, the ‘Bridget’ at Wharfdale and the
‘Miser’ at Linton correspond to the ‘Bessy’ who appears elsewhere.
The Shetland dance, so far as the names go, is far more literary
and less of a folk affair than any of the English examples. The
grotesques are absent altogether, and the dancers belong wholly to
that heroic category which is also represented in a degenerate form
at Houghton-le-Spring. They are in fact those ‘seven champions of
Christendom’—St. George of England, St. James of Spain, St. Denys
of France, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Anthony of
Italy, and St. Andrew of Scotland—whose legends were first brought
together under that designation by Richard Johnson in 1596[680].
Precisely the same divergence between a popular and a literary
or heroic type of nomenclature presents itself in such of the German
sword-dance rhymes as are in print. Three very similar versions from
Styria, Hungary, and Bohemia are traceable to a common ‘Austro-
Bavarian’ archetype[681]. The names of these, so far as they are
intelligible at all, appear to be due to the village imagination,
working perhaps in one or two instances, such as ‘Grünwald’ or
‘Wilder Waldmann,’ upon stock figures of the folk festivals[682]. It is
the heroic element, however, which predominates in the two other
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