THE EVOLUTION OF DANCING. 753 



paying his court to Anne of Austria, by performing a saraband 

 before her in jester's dress of green velvet, with bells on his feet 

 and castanets in his hands ! * 



Long after dancing became secularized, it remained part and 

 parcel of divine services. Gregory Thaumaturgus introduced 

 prancing into Christian ritual; and Scaliger derives prcesules 

 a name given to the bishops from a prcesiliendo, from the fact 

 of their "skipping first," or leading the clergy, in the altar- 

 dances. In the middle ages the Mystery Plays were simply cho- 

 ral dances and songs. There were biblical stories and " moral les- 

 sons " told to the folk. The famous Dance of Death was a pop- 

 ular spectacular play, in which pope, cardinal, king, prince, and 

 pauper were invited by the gay and festive skeleton to dance 

 with him, and there was no alternative. Finally, as a survival 

 from the inedigeval Church, we have the Corpus Christi dances, 

 which were performed until within late years by the congrega- 

 tion in the Seville Cathedral. \ 



The orgiastic impulse is one of the wildest and most rebellious 

 passions in human nature. It is continually breaking through 

 the thin veneer that civilization supplies. It has shown itself at 

 different times in Europe. X This " passion of Dionysus " takes 

 possession of the folk, of the people in the country, on heath or 

 by sea. The impulse which seizes girls in modern Greece is so 

 strong that they dance themselves to death on the hills. The 

 dancers are victims of the Nereids, say the peasants. In ancient 

 Greece, as Mr. Lang observes, they would have been saluted as 

 the nurses and companions of Dionysus, and their disease would 

 have been hallowed by religion.* 



It needed only a young Cheyenne to fall into a trance, to dream 

 that he had seen and talked with the Christ, to proclaim himself 

 a prophet of the new religion, to begin dancing in fast and furi- 

 ous fashion it needed only this to start the " Messiah craze " in 

 the fall of 1890. || The dancing mania soon seized the Indians, 

 and, within a month, the Cheyennes, Pawnees, Comanches, Arap- 

 ahoes, Kiowas, Wichitas, and other smaller tribes were perform- 

 ing the " dance to Christ," called by the whites the " Ghost- 



* In the days of Queen Bess the queen herself an adept in the art " the grave Lord 

 Keeper led the brawls," without losing his own respect and dignity. 



\ In the autos sacratnentales, or miracle plays, dancing was introduced in honor of the 

 sacrament. The little choir boys of the cathedral still dance before the Host every evening 

 at five o'clock. 



% See Leeky's Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 7*7, for the " dancing mania " of Flanders 

 and Germany. 



* Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii, p. 241. 



|| Miss Alice Fletcher says the " craze " would have died out had it not been for the 



medicine-men or conjurers, who " multiplied stories and marvels." Journal of American 

 Folk Lore, vol. iv, p. 60. 

 vol. xll. 54 



