6 The Dance of Death.

prayed to God and Saint Magnus that they might remaindancing and singing for a whole year without intermission :and so it happened, neither dew nor rain falling uponthem. Hunger and fatigue were set at defiance, nor weretheir shoes or garments in the least worn away. At the;end of the year they were released from their situation byHerebert, the archbishop of the diocese in which the eventtook place, and obtained forgiveness before the altar ofthe church; but not before the daughter of a priest andtwo others had perished; the rest, after sleeping for thespace of three whole nights, died soon afterwards. Ubert,one of the party, left this story behind him, which iselsewhere recorded, with some variation and additionalmatter. The dance is called St. Vitus's, and the girl ismade the daughter of a churchwarden, who having takenher by the arm, it came off, but she continued dancing.By the continual motion of the dancers, they buriedthemselves in the earth to their waists. Many princes andothers went to behold this strange spectacle, till the bishopsof Cologne and Hildesheim, and some other devout priests,by their prayers, obtained the deliverance of the culprits jfour of the party, however, died immediately, some sleptthree days and three nights, some three years, and othershad trembling in their limbs during the whole of their lives.The Nuremberg Chronicle, crowded as it is with wood-cutembellishments by the hand of Wohlgemuth, the master ofAlbert Diirer, has not omitted to exhibit the representationsof the above unhappy persons, equally correct, no doubt,as the story itself, though the same warranty cannot beoffered for a similar representation, in Gottfried's Chronicle,and that copious repertory of monstrosities, Boistuau andBelleforest's Histoires Prodigieuses. The Nuremberg Chro-nicle 11 has yet another relation on this subject of somepersons who continued dancing and singing on a bridgewhilst the eucharist was passing over it. The bridge gaveway in the middle, and from one end of it 200 personswere precipitated into the river Moselle, the other endremaining so as to permit the priest and his host to passuninjured.

In that extremely curious work, the Manuel de Pe'che,11 Folio ccxvii.