Part 11 (2/2)

In the third place (3) I think we may see--and this is the special subject of the present chapter--that at a very early period, when humanity was hardly capable of systematic expression in what we call Philosophy or Science, it could not well rise to an ordered and literary expression of its beliefs, such as we find in the later religions and the 'Churches' (Babylonian, Jewish, East Indian, Christian, or what-not), and yet that it FELT these beliefs very intensely and was urged, almost compelled, to their utterance in some form or other. And so it came about that people expressed themselves in a vast ma.s.s of ritual and myth--customs, ceremonies, legends, stories--which on account of their popular and concrete form were handed down for generations, and some of which linger on still in the midst of our modern civilization.

These rituals and legends were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling and childish in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we have seen, were full of meaning and suggestion.

A critical and commercial Civilization, such as ours, in which (notwithstanding much TALK about Art) the artistic sense is greatly lacking, or at any rate but little diffused, does not as a rule understand that poetic RITES, in the evolution of peoples, came naturally before anything like ordered poems or philosophy or systematized VIEWS about life and religion--such as WE love to wallow in! Things were FELT before they were spoken. The loading of diseases into disease-boats, of sins onto scape-goats, the propitiation of the forces of nature by victims, human or animal, sacrifices, ceremonies of re-birth, eucharistic feasts, s.e.xual communions, orgiastic celebrations of the common life, and a host of other things--all SAID plainly enough what was meant, but not in WORDS. Partly no doubt it was that at some early time words were more difficult of command and less flexible in use than actions (and at all times are they not less expressive?). Partly it was that mankind was in the child-stage. The Child delights in ritual, in symbol, in expression through material objects and actions:

See, at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart.

And primitive man in the child-stage felt a positive joy in ritual celebrations, and indulged in expressions which we but little understand; for these had then his heart.

One of the most pregnant of these expressions was DANCING. Children dance instinctively. They dance with rage; they dance with joy, with sheer vitality; they dance with pain, or sometimes with savage glee at the suffering of others; they delight in mimic combats, or in animal plays and disguises. There are such things as Courting-dances, when the mature male and female go through a ritual together--not only in civilized ball-rooms and the back-parlors of inns, but in the farmyards where the rooster pays his addresses to the hen, or the yearling bull to the cow--with quite recognized formalities; there are elaborate ceremonials performed by the Australian bower-birds and many other animals. All these things--at any rate in children and animals--come before speech; and anyhow we may say that LOVE-RITES, even in mature and civilized man, hardly ADMIT of speech. Words only vulgarize love and blunt its edge.

So Dance to the savage and the early man was not merely an amus.e.m.e.nt or a gymnastic exercise (as the books often try to make out), but it was also a serious and intimate part of life, an expression of religion and the relation of man to non-human Powers. Imagine a young dancer--and the admitted age for ritual dancing was commonly from about eighteen to thirty--coming forward on the dancing-ground or platform for the INVOCATION OF RAIN. We have unfortunately no kinematic records, but it is not impossible or very difficult to imagine the various gestures and movements which might be considered appropriate to such a rite in different localities or among different peoples. A modern student of Dalcroze Eurhythmics would find the problem easy. After a time a certain ritual dance (for rain) would become stereotyped and generally adopted.

Or imagine a young Greek leading an invocation to Apollo to STAY SOME PLAGUE which was ravaging the country. He might as well be accompanied by a small body of co-dancers; but he would be the leader and chief representative. Or it might be a WAR-DANCE--as a more or less magical preparation for the raid or foray. We are familiar enough with accounts of war-dances among American Indians. C. O. Muller in his History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (1) gives the following account of the Pyrrhic dance among the Greeks, which was danced in full armor:--”Plato says that it imitated all the att.i.tudes of defence, by avoiding a thrust or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Baccha.n.a.lian revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and boys of fifteen were instructed in it.” Of the Hunting-dance I have already given instances. (2) It always had the character of Magic about it, by which the game or quarry might presumably be influenced; and it can easily be understood that if the Hunt was not successful the blame might well be attributed to some neglect of the usual ritual mimes or movements--no laughing matter for the leader of the dance.

(1) Book IV, ch. 6, Section 7.

(2) See also Winwood Reade's Savage Africa, ch. xviii, in which he speaks of the ”gorilla dance,” before hunting gorillas, as a ”religious festival.”

Or there were dances belonging to the ceremonies of Initiation--dances both by the initiators and the initiated. Jane E. Harrison in Themis (p.

24) says, ”Instruction among savage peoples is always imparted in more or less mimetic dances. At initiation you learn certain dances which confer on you definite social status. When a man is too old to dance, he hands over his dance to another and a younger, and he then among some tribes ceases to exist socially.... The dances taught to boys at initiation are frequently if not always ARMED dances. These are not necessarily warlike. The accoutrement of spear and s.h.i.+eld was in part decorative, in part a provision for making the necessary hubbub.” (Here Miss Harrison reproduces a photograph of an Initiation dance among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.) The Initiation-dances blend insensibly and naturally with the Mystery and Religion dances, for indeed initiation was for the most part an instruction in the mysteries and social rites of the Tribe. They were the expression of things which would be hard even for us, and which for rude folk would be impossible, to put into definite words. Hence arose the expression--whose meaning has been much discussed by the learned--”to dance out ([gr ezorceisqai]) a mystery.” (1) Lucian, in a much-quoted pa.s.sage, (2) observes: ”You cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing ...

and this much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of the mysteries that they 'dance them out.'” Andrew Lang, commenting on this pa.s.sage, (3) continues: ”Clement of Alexandria uses the same term when speaking of his own 'appalling revelations.' So closely connected are mysteries with dancing among savages that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not initiated, he said: 'Only the initiated men of that dance know these things.' To 'dance' this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action. So widely distributed is the practice that Acosta in an interesting pa.s.sage mentions it as familiar to the people of Peru before and after the Spanish conquest.” (And we may say that when the 'mysteries' are of a s.e.xual nature it can easily be understood that to 'dance them out' is the only way of explaining them!)

(1) Meaning apparently either simply to represent, or, sometimes to DIVULGE, a mystery.

(2) [gr peri 'Orchsews], Ch. xv. 277.

(3) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 272.

Thus we begin to appreciate the serious nature and the importance of the dance among primitive folk. To dub a youth ”a good dancer” is to pay him a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friends.h.i.+p and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes what is really meant--namely the fitness of the loved comrade to lead in religious and magical rituals--then indeed the compliment takes on a new complexion. Religious dances, in dedication to a G.o.d, have of course been honored in every country. Muller, in the work just cited, (1) describes a lively dance called the hyporchema which, accompanied by songs, was used in the wors.h.i.+p of Apollo. ”In this, besides the chorus of singers who usually danced around THE BLAZING ALTAR, several persons were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate pantomimic display.” It was probably some similar dance which is recorded in Exodus, ch. x.x.xii, when Aaron made the Israelites a golden Calf (image of the Egyptian Apis). There was an altar and a fire and burnt offerings for sacrifice, and the people dancing around. Whether in the Apollo ritual the dancers were naked I cannot say, but in the affair of the golden Calf they evidently were, for it will be remembered that it was just this which upset Moses' equanimity so badly--”when he SAW THAT THE PEOPLE WERE NAKED”--and led to the breaking of the two tables of stone and the slaughter of some thousands of folk. It will be remembered also that David on a sacrificial occasion danced naked before the Lord. (2)

(1) Book II, ch. viii, Section 14.

(2) 2 Sam. vi.

It may seem strange that dances in honor of a G.o.d should be held naked; but there is abundant evidence that this was frequently the case, and it leads to an interesting speculation. Many of these rituals undoubtedly owed their sanct.i.ty and solemnity to their extreme antiquity. They came down in fact from very far back times when the average man or woman--as in some of the Central African tribes to-day--wore simply nothing at all; and like all religious ceremonies they tended to preserve their forms long after surrounding customs and conditions had altered.

Consequently nakedness lingered on in sacrificial and other rites into periods when in ordinary life it had come to be abandoned or thought indecent and shameful. This comes out very clearly in both instances above--quoted from the Bible. For in Exodus x.x.xii. 25 it is said that ”Aaron had made them (the dancers) naked UNTO THEIR SHAME among their enemies (READ opponents),” and in 2 Sam. vi. 20 we are told that Michal came out and sarcastically rebuked the ”glorious king of Israel” for ”shamelessly uncovering himself, like a vain fellow” (for which rebuke, I am sorry to say, David took a mean revenge on Michal). In both cases evidently custom had so far changed that to a considerable section of the population these naked exhibitions had become indecent, though as parts of an acknowledged ritual they were still retained and supported by others. The same conclusion may be derived from the commands recorded in Exodus xx. 26 and xxviii. 42, that the priests be not ”uncovered”

before the altar--commands which would hardly have been needed had not the practice been in vogue.

Then there were dances (partly magical or religious) performed at rustic and agricultural festivals, like the Epilenios, celebrated in Greece at the gathering of the grapes. (1) Of such a dance we get a glimpse in the Bible (Judges xxi. 20) when the elders advised the children of Benjamin to go out and lie in wait in the vineyards, at the time of the yearly feast; and ”when the daughters of s.h.i.+loh come out to dance in the dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man a wife from the daughters of s.h.i.+loh”--a touching example apparently of early so-called 'marriage by capture'! Or there were dances, also partly or originally religious, of a quite orgiastic and Baccha.n.a.lian character, like the Bryallicha performed in Sparta by men and women in hideous masks, or the Deimalea by Sileni and Satyrs waltzing in a circle; or the Bibasis carried out by both men and women--a quite gymnastic exercise in which the performers took a special pride in striking their own b.u.t.tocks with their heels! or others wilder still, which it would perhaps not be convenient to describe.

(1) [gr Epilhnioi umnoi]: hymns sung over the winepress (Dictionary).

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