THE LAND OF HAUNTED CASTLES
BY: ROBERT J. CASEY
NEW YORK, 1921
(back to first part of text) --- Only once was the dance stopped, — by whose authority it is not said. On that occasion, though human beings went loyally to their work, the cattle felt an atavistic tingling in their feet and capered out into the hills with scandalous abandon. Many of them died as had the cows afflicted by the dancing-epidemic years before.
The ceremonial of the procession starts at five o'clock in the morning with the celebration of masses at numerous roadside altars scattered through the town.
On the bridge across the Sure and on the Prussian banks of the river opposite Echternach the clans of the dance are gathering,— old and young, sick and well, spry and halt. Wreaths of spring flowers and silken banners embroidered in tarnished gilt are flung from the windows. The morning sun strikes a strange camival of color and motion.
The streets fill rapidly as men in their high hats and ceremonial black, women in finery that has been handed down without alteration for years, girls in starched linen and tight braids, boys scrubbed until the outer layer of skin seems to have vanished from their ruddy faces and omnipresent hands, step out into the cobbled street and hurry toward the assembling-point. It is not yet half-past five and the procession does not start until eight, but the hurry of preparation is always a part of the solenm ceremony.
In 1913, it is said, more than twenty-five thousand men, women, and children took part in the dance and countless hundreds more crowded the narrow streets to watch them. During the war, while the Prussian pilgrims were more numerous, Luxemburg's delegations were smaller. In the year after the signing of the armistice Luxemburg journeyed once more to the age-honored shrine. But American guards on the Sure were a bit inquisitive concerning the intentions of the pious Prussians. The dance has not yet regained the proportions of 1913.
There is movement in the crowded battalions across the river. An orchestral choir falls in behind the priests and strikes up a simple melody that becomes barbaric as it is echoed by a weird medley of voices and given a pronounced rhythm in the shuffling of regiments of feet.
The first of the marchers enters the town. The dance begins. ''Sancte Willibrorde dime pater pauperum ora pro nobis is the chant that sweeps up out of the vale in an awe-inspiring volume; "Saint Willibrord, dear friend of the poor, pray for us."
The dancers move on into the town — three steps forward and two back — with a sureness of foot and a sense of rhythm that sets the ground to vibrating.
Instruments new and old, familiar and strange, in tune and out, blast out their hymn-tune with a savage energy that lends a wild note to the monotonous drum chorus of dancing feet. Bagpipes, flutes, flageolets, reed instruments of a hundred shapes and sizes, battered brass horns take up the air.
Long before the appointed hour a vast host has assembled in the fields across the Sure (*). The bridge is packed with them, — as strange an assemblage as ever met for the glory of God. The priests file down to the bridge-head to take up their place at the head of the procession. Before them march a cross-bearer, eight banner-bearers, and numerous acolytes with tapers and censers. For three hours the incense has been burning at a score of shrines and the air is spiced with a blend of aromatics and flowers.
The bell of Maximilian, a present from the emperor to the abbey, sounds a solemn siunmons. From the moment of its first peal it has a solo part in the symphony of Echternach. The town is so quiet that a spoken word at the bridge would carry to the hill on which stands the parish church. The bell ceases. The clank of censer chains disturbs the muffling stillness. The priests and their escort move out toward the church. The throng on the bridge stirs itself, with a murmur that is like a sigh.
Until 1906 it was customary to conclude the dance at the church of Sts. Peter and Paul and the pilgrims stepped their peculiar polka up and down the sixty stairs with as much freshness and energy as they had displayed at the starting-point. This was no small feat, when one considers that the dance usually consumes more than five hours, a period during which all the dancers are in motion.
With the removal of St. Willibrord's remains to the basilica, however, the rigors of the ceremonial were lessened. Now the crowds dance into the abbey church, continue their rhythmic glide up the center aisle, separate, dance down the side aisle and out at the door, and their part in the ceremony is over.
No bacchanalian reaction follows the dance of Echternach, which is perhaps the strangest part of it. Many a kermess in the Ardennes nearer the Meuse starts out as auspiciously as this and ends in a carouse that no stretch of imagination could provide with a cloak of religion. In Echternach the end of the dance marks the end of the festival. The tired pilgrims go to their homes, divest themselves of glad raiment, and fall to their dinners with energy, discussing, most like, the much larger procession of Grandmother's day when everybody danced in wooden shoes and the clatter was too awenspiring to permit of description.
