In the _History of Yorkshire_ (1814, p. 296) it tells how, during the Christmas holidays, the Sword or Morisco Dance used to be practised at Richmond by young men dressed in shirts ornamented with ribbons folded into roses, having swords, or wood cut in the form of that weapon. They exhibited various feats of activity, attended by an old fiddler, by "Bessy," in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and by the fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on his head, and the tail of a fox hanging from his head. These led the festive throng, and diverted the crowd with their droll antic buffoonery. The office of one of these characters was to go about rattling a box, and soliciting money from door to door to defray the expenses of a feast, and a dance in the evening.[63]
[Footnote 63: This dance is thus described in _Notes and Queries_ (5th series, xii. 506). "Six youths, called sword dancers, dressed in white and decked with ribbons, accompanied by a fiddler, a boy in fantastic attire, the Bessy, and a doctor, practised a rude dance till New Year's day, when they ended with a feast. The Bessy interfered, whilst the dancers, surrounded him with swords, and he was killed."]
In Sheffield the custom of "first-foot" is kept up on Christmas day and New Year's day, but there is no distinction as to complexion or colour of hair of the male who first enters the house.
A correspondent in _Notes and Queries_ (3rd series, i. 223), writes: "The object of desire is that the first person who enters a house on the morning of Christmas day or that of New Year's day, should have black or dark hair. Many make arrangements by special invitation that some man or boy of dark hair, and otherwise approved, should present himself at an early hour to wish the compliments of the season, and the door is not opened to let any one else in until the arrival of the favoured person. He is regaled with spice cake and cheese, and with ale or spirits, as the case may be. All the 'ill luck'--that is, the untoward circumstances of the year, would be ascribed to the accident of a person with light hair having been the first to enter a dwelling on the mornings referred to. I have known instances where such persons, innocently presenting themselves, have met with anything but a Christmas welcome. The great object of dread is a red-haired man or boy (women or girls of any coloured hair or complexion are not admissible as the first visitors at all), and all light shades are objectionable.