Macalistek— Temair Breg : Remains and Traditions oj Vara. 398 



the great man buried within. It is of the same order of ideas as the thunder- 

 symbols pictured on the interim- walls. New Grange is the crystallization of 



an eternal corroboree. 



Let us now cross the Continent and visit the sacred island of Delos. Here 

 we find that down to the time of Plutarch the youths were won I to perform 

 a remarkable dance in honour of Apollo. The dance was instituted, as legend 

 said, by Theseus, when, on bis return from Crete after slaying the Minotaur, 

 he visited Delos and sacrificed to Apollo, dedicating ro ntppuBhiov which he 

 had received from Ariadne. 1 The dance was an imitation of the mazy wind- 

 ings of the Cretan labyrinth ; and Plutarch, on the authority of Dicaearchus, 

 tells us that the Delians called the ceremony " the Crane Dance." 



The current explanation of the name, that the winding twists of the 

 dance were suggestive of the grotesque bowings and dancings characteristic 

 of cranes, is surely insufficient. For why should cranes be taken as the 

 model to follow ? The most probable answer to this is that cranes are among 

 the most conspicuous of the migratory birds. They winter in Central Africa 

 and other hot countries; but return northward in early spring. Thus the 

 crane might very early become associated with the re-birth of the warm 

 season; and a dance in which the peculiar motions of the bird were imitated 

 would be a magical ceremony designed to hasten the coining of the spring. 

 We are to understand that originally the dancers personated cranes, probably 

 dressed up as the birds, just as the girls of Braurou dressed up as bears in 

 honour of Artemis. 2 



The same or a similar dance was to lie found in Crete, as Homer 3 and 

 Pausanias' tell us. The latter writer, enumerating the works of Daedalus, 

 names Ariadne's Dance in white marble at Cnossos. This brings the labyrinth 

 dance into close connexion with the Minotaur." A dance in one island of the 

 Aegean connected with the name of Theseus, and another dance on another 

 island of the Aegean connected with the name of Ariadne, especially when 

 both are of a " labyrinthine " nature, are almost of necessity ditl'erent local 

 manifestations of one and the same rite. It follows that the dance round the 

 bull-god called the Minotaur was a " Crane-dance," even though cranes are 

 not mentioned in connexion with the Cretan rite. 



1 Plutarch, Theseus xxi. The luppoStnop is doubtfully interpreted as being a statue of 

 Aphrodite. 



-The Eiwyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition cxvi, 838 a), quotes P. S. Pallas, 

 Btisedurch verschiedene Provhvsai des RiwsiscAeii Reicfa, in. 177 s . aa an authority for a 

 crane-dance among the Ostiaks of Siberia, in which the dancers are dressed up »uli the 

 skins and heads of cranes. 



3 Iliad, xviii, 590. ' IX, xl. ;i. 



5 For a discussion of the Ariadne dance and its meaning, see Frazer, Tin Dying I 

 p. 75. 



