Luxembourg - Event

The Dancing Procession of Echternach sees pilgrims dance for the purging of sins through town, visiting the remains of the saint in the Basilica. It is a custom dating back more than 1000 years.

According to legend, the tune pilgrims dance to was played on a fiddle by a medieval thief. Granted a final wish before his execution, he asked to play his violin in the town marketplace. The tune was so lively that it set the people dancing and in all the confusion he was able to slip away and so escaped his sentence.

The Dancing Procession of Echternach was then taken up by Christians in honour of St Willibrord and in an attempt to be spared the terrors of diseases such as the plague and St Vitus' Dance.