754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dance." " They will dance," says one witness, " from Friday 

 afternoon till sundown on Sunday. They keep going round in 

 one direction until they become so dizzy that they can scarcely 

 stand, then turn and go in the other direction, and keep it up until 

 they swoon from exhaustion. That is what they strive to do, for 

 while they are in a swoon they think they see and talk with the 

 new Christ." Now, observe : " At the end of the dance they have 

 a grand feast, the revel lasting all Sunday night." * 



Thus far little has been said about the different movements 

 and steps of ancient dances. What the figures " woven paces and 

 waving hands " in early Greek dances were, no one can say with 

 exactness. The earliest description of dancing which we can re- 

 produce is the account of the dance on the shield of Achilles, 

 which bore the sculptured scene 



" Of youths and maidens bounding hand in hand. 







Now all at once tbey rise, at once descend, 



"With well-taught feet; now shape in oblique ways 



Confus'dly regular the moving maze; 



Now forth at once, too swift for sight, they spring, 



And undistinguished blend the flying ring : 



So whirls a wheel in giddy circle tost, 



And rapid as it runs the single spokes are lost." 



Here we have the simplest kind of dancing. Youths and 

 maidens take one another by the hand, and spin round and round 

 like a potter's wheel. This form of Homeric Greek dance in the 

 dance of Bacchus is known as the dithyramb. It survives to the 

 present day in the " jiggering " of children, who join hands and 

 prance around in a circle. 



Later on, the Greeks divided dances into round and square. 

 Their round dances the word " round " meaning something more 

 than our " round " were dances of pleasure and revelry. Their 

 square dances were military and dramatic. The Spartans drilled 

 their men in Pyrrhic dance to the ringing sound of spear and 

 shield. The square dances of the ancients required some art and 

 some practice, while little of either was necessary in their round 

 dances. 



The real charm of true dancing consists rather in a graceful 

 swaying of the body and arms than in violent movements and 

 complicated steps. Take, for example, the dances performed by 

 the Nautch girls the most enchanting and ravishing dancers in 

 the world. In their dances you see no springs, no vehement 

 pirouettes, no violent sawing of the arms, no painful contortions 



* Journal of American Folk Lore, March, 1891. 



