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Updated: May 19, 2025
As it was sunset the wild yet mournful sound of tom-tom and kettle and cymbal and reed suddenly struck up. I could have shut my eyes and fancied myself in camp again in the desert, with the wild sword-dances being performed by the Arabs. The following day at evening we left Poonah for Hyderabad. We travelled all night and next day, and arrived towards evening.
Then came sword-dances with naked blades, when some young Moro advanced and retreated, leaped high in the air, or crouched on the ground, waving his barong or kris aloft, now retreating, now coming uncomfortably close to the little party of unarmed Americans, the flickering light gleaming redly on the glittering knife, and reminding one, with a horrid insistence, that the time and place were ideal for a wholesale slaughter.
And in the evening there were sword-dances and reels. But Albert had determined to pull down the little old house, and to build in its place a castle of his own designing. With great ceremony, in accordance with a memorandum drawn up by the Prince for the occasion, the foundation-stone of the new edifice was laid, and by 1855 it was habitable.
In one part of the village two men were posturing in one of the inane sword-dances which are so dear to all Malays, each performance being a subject of keen criticism or hearty admiration to the spectators.
In the second act, Hernando Cortez appears, with soldiers. While the costumes of the indians were gay, and more or less attractive, those of these European warriors were ludicrously mongrel and unbecoming. The new-comers demanded that Montezuma acknowledge the authority of the King of Spain and the cross of Christ. Conversations, demands, replies, tableaus, sword-dances, etc., ensued.
One, when only four years old, was given to Sir Isaac Newton to make a stand for his telescope, and another seems to have had a narrow escape from being handed over to a less celebrated astronomer, some years later. The May-day morris-dancers, like the Christmas mummers, performed sword-dances and sang appropriate doggerels in costume.
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