The serpent dance is a traditional Cornish dance associated with the Midsummer festival of Golowan and Cornish cultural events such as nos lowen (earlier spelling noze looan).

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Below is a description of the dance as performed in the Golowan fire festival in Penzance in the 19th century from J S Courtney's A Guide to Penzance and Its Neighbourhood (1845):

"The proceedings finished by the boys and girls from the quay, whose torches had by this time expired, dancing in a long line hand-in-hand through the streets, in and out and sometimes over the now low burning tar-barrels, crying out, "An eye, an eye". At this shout the top couple held up their arms and beginning with the last the others ran under them thus reversing their position."