Long Dance

Festival of midsummer eve, celebrated widely throughout the Archipelago with dance and song lasting all night long. The Creation of Éa and Deed of Erreth-Akbe are traditionally recited at this time. This festival is celebrated even by the Children of the Open Sea (raft people), who share few other customs with the Archipelago

[Major sources: A Description of Earthsea, TfE]

'As the sun rose the next morning the Chanters of Roke began to sing the long Deed of Erreth-Akbe… When the chant was finished the Long Dance began. Townsfolk and Masters and students and farmers all together, men and women, danced in the warm dust and dusk down all the roads of Roke to the sea-beaches, to the beat of drums and drone of pipes and flutes. Straight out into the sea they danced, under the moon one night past full, and the mustic was lost in the breakers' sound. As the east grew light they came back up the beaches and the roads, the drums silent and only the flutes playing soft and shrill. So it was done on every island of the Archipelago that night: one dance, one music binding together the sea-divided lands.'

[The Loosing of the Shadow, WoE]