Studio: international art (9.1897)

The "Furry Dance"

A BIT OF HELSTON FROM A PAINTING BY NORMAN GARSTIN

have been pouring in
crowds, and the little town
is all bustle; flags flaunt
their many-coloured nation-
alities across the street,
carriages and carts are
driving in from all sides.
The footpath is very nearly
impassable, what with the
booth on one side and the
shop on the other, and the
slow rustic moving vaguely
and uncertainly from side
to side; the principal
houses and shops have
their doors swathed with
boughs of evergreens, which
serve a double purpose :
they help the town to a
festival appearance and also
show through which doors
the dancers are to go. For
now it is nearly one o'clock
and the gentry are about to
begin.

They are assembled in a
hall, where the Mayor or
some other respected Hel-
stonian marshals the young
people who wish to dance,
and himself with his part-
ner leads the procession, a
band playing the unvarying
Flora tune, which rings in
your ear throughout the
day. These are some
quaintly irrelevant words
that are popularly jingled
with this tune :

' • The whale, the whale of
which we sing,

i 11 j i> • i , , * i Is the ocean's pride and

the valley declining toward the sea at the Loe pool, the fishes' king."

a curious fresh water lake held back from the open

water by a natural sand bar. If you came upon Likewise these others, which certainly seem more

Helston on a day that was not market-day you 111 harmony with the subject:

would find a decent town where you would feel « As John Brown was a walking home

certain that life would pass calmly, uneventfullv, He met Miss Sally the glover,

and withal comfortably, if one might judge by the He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,

■" ° . : ° 3. He kissed her three times over,

houses, which possess an old-fashioned air of

pleasant well-being. Gardens, green and sunny, Whether Miss Sally's shop was the original or.e,

may be seen through open doors even in the main in which we are told it was dc rigeur for the

street, with quaint overhanging bow windows ; dancers to meet and buy their gloves, I cannot say,

even this business thoroughfare—if I may call it but perhaps it was only the gentlemen who dealt

so without satire—is sufficient evidence that at with Miss Sally.

Helston at least people have still time to sit and Out they go, these merry dancers, into the sun-
watch their neighbours. shine and into the crowd, which good-humouredly
But come to Helston on the Flora or " Furry tries to make room for them. They dance in and
Day," as it is locally called, and all is changed ; out of houses and shops, through the rooms and
from Falmouth, from Hayle, from Redruth, Cam- yards, and back again into the street, the men clad
borne, Penzance, Truro, the trams and the roads in tall silk hats and frock coats, the ladies in what-
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