Welsh Journals

132 THE GLAMOEGAN EEVEL. but fetes, festivals, revels, and vigils are older than Christi¬ anity itself—as old, in fact, as are gregarious communities of men. The Greeks had their Olympiads, and the Komans their Saturnalias, from the beginning of their histories ; and amongst all the races that later times have discovered -be they Mexi¬ cans, Peruvians, South Sea Islanders, or North American Indians—none have been found but had their feast and festival days; and dancing, or the moving of the body in rhythmic measure, always formed part of their enjoyments. A love of dancing is inherent in mankind. A young child will obey its natural promptings, and will try to move itself in unison with musical sounds almost as soon as it can walk, or the first time it hears such sounds. The Eoman Church had doubtlessly fixed the day for the fete, but it had by no means invented it. It was usually held on the Ecclesiastical Sabbath day next before the saint's day in the calendar to which the village church was dedicated; but there were exceptional cases, where it had been arbitrarily fixed, for some other cause quite forgotten. It is certain that at the time in question not one in a thousand of the people that entered upon its pleasures had any knowledge at all about its origin, or cared for its claims on Pagan or Christian days. They only knew it as a time for them to unbend and enjoy themselves, and in that guise only did they care about it. The village saint may have been a very worthy person, but of him they had no knowledge, nor wished for any. If such saint, looking down upon their pro¬ ceedings, approved of them, well and good ; if not, it mattered not to them. Many or most of the villages in the dales at that time had municipal buildings of their own, for, in fact, was not every parish a small municipality, managing wholly its own affairs— having the care of its own poor, its roads, and the keeping of the King's peace entirely in its own hands, without Government auditors, inspectors, or interference of any kind. Those build¬ ings usually consisted, on the ground floor, of a number of separate apartments resembling alms-houses, which sheltered the pauper poor; and on the floor above, a spacious apartment over all, called usually the Church Loft, in which the ratepayers and vestries assembled to settle parochial affairs. Those Church houses were, and are where they still exist, very interesting buildings to the antiquary and archaeologist. They date back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and are well worth preserving. In them the village school was held, and the village club transacted its affairs. In them also the Mabsant was celebrated, so far as dancing was concerned ; and that was the chief, if not the entire, attraction of the festival at the period I remember it. In the village I was best acquainted with, the Church build-