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Helps and hints for Hallowe'en cover

Helps and hints for Hallowe'en

Chapter 16: Cat-tail Drill
By Laura Rountree Smith
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About This Book

A practical handbook for organizing Halloween festivities provides a compact cultural introduction and step-by-step programs for parties and school entertainments. It gives invitation and decoration ideas, fortune-telling contrivances, parlor games and stunts, shadow-play and pantomime directions, short drills and songs, and numerous dialogs, puppet plays, and carnival or wax-work scenes ready for performance. Numerous jingles, cues, and staging notes accompany each item, enabling modest productions at home, church, or school.

Cat-tail Drill

An even number of girls and boys enter with real or made cat-tails, tied with yellow and black streamers of tissue paper. They enter from right and left.

[The boys form a circle at the right, girls form a circle at the left, hold cat-tails high; all circle toward the right, all circle toward the left, go to center and back in each circle; each circle forms a line, stand with sides to audience, face each other, march forward and back twice; march forward, pass between and back to places, repeat and stay on opposite sides; march again, meet, hold cat-tails touching, end couples pass under the next, and next, until all have passed under and returned to place in lines. March now right and left, line tip in two lines, girls in front, boys behind, drill to four counts of music. Hold cat-tails vertically out in right hand to right, left, up, down, swing to and fro; repeat, hold in left hand, describe a circle holding in left hand, in right hand. Make the circle toward left, right, and out in front. Hold horizontally with both hands out in front, under chins, above heads, raise and lower in this position. Hold cat-tails under chins, recite]:

Hark! hark!
The night is dark,
The witches are coming to town,
On Hallowe’en,
They all are seen,
And each in a brand-new gown.

[Girls lower cat-tails, boys raise cat-tails, recite]:

Boys:

Cat-tails growing by the streams,
Elves and fairies they have seen.

Girls:

At this hour let us dream,
Late at night on Hallowe’en.

[They all sing, swaying cat-tails to and fro.]

Tune: “Lightly Row.”

1.

Lullaby, lullaby,
Swinging low and swinging high;
Lullaby, lullaby,
Late on Hallowe’en.
Nod your little drowsy head,
Play you’re fast asleep in bed;
Lullaby, lullaby,
Late on Hallowe’en.

[Mark time with feet.]

2.

Lullaby, lullaby,
On our tiptoes we will creep;
Lullaby, lullaby,
While the witches sleep.
In October it is well,
To escape the fairies’ spell;
Lullaby, lullaby,
Quiet we will keep.

[Boys march to right and in a circle, girls to left in a circle.]

3.

Lullaby, lullaby,
There is nothing to alarm;
Lullaby, lullaby,
Cat-tails bring no harm.
Jack-o’-Lantern’s ghost is seen,
Everywhere on Hallowe’en;
Lullaby, lullaby,
Wave your magic charm.

[March off stage.]