The lord's music, consisting of a
tabor and pipe, is employed to conduct the dance. Companies of
morrice-dancers, attended by the jester and tabor and pipe, go about
the country on Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week, and collect sums
towards defraying the expenses of the Yule. All the figures of the
lord, &c. of the Yule, handsomely represented in basso-relievo, stand
in the north wall of the nave of Cirencester Church, which vouches for
the antiquity of the custom; and, on many of these occasions, they
erect a may-pole, which denotes its rise in Druidism. The mace is made
of silk, finely plaited with ribbons on the top, and filled with
spices and perfumes for such of the company to smell to as desire it.
Halbert H.
* * * * *
ANCIENT FUNERAL RITES AMONG THE GREEKS.
(_For the Mirror_.)
The dead were ever held sacred and inviolable even amongst the most
barbarous nations; to defraud them of any due respect was a greater
and more unpardonable sacrilege than to spoil the temples of the gods;
their memories were preserved with a religious care and reverence, and
all their remains honoured with worship and adoration; hatred and envy
themselves were put to silence, for it was thought a sign of a cruel
and inhuman disposition to speak evil of the dead, and prosecute
revenge beyond the grave.
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