Ancient Art and Ritual | Page 7

wants done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he
utters spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is
strenuously and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a
savage wants sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and
prostrate himself before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a
sun dance or a wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and
catch a bear, he does not pray to his god for strength to outwit and
outmatch the bear, he rehearses his hunt in a bear dance.
Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to
overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the
quite young from sheer joie de vivre, and essentially inappropriate to
the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolávoa_
means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a
young man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolávoa_). He
means "Why do you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to
us to learn that among savages, as a man passes from childhood to
youth, from youth to mature manhood, so the number of his "dances"
increase, and the number of these "dances" is the measure pari passu of
his social importance. Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases
to exist, _because he cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social
status, passes to another and a younger.
* * * * *
Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among
the Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5]
for a man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that
this will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and
Austria the peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or

leaping high or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap
the taller will be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt
as to the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian
farmers have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into
the air and, catching them again, exclaim, "May the crop grow as high
as the spade has gone." In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance
one by one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is
decked with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small
bell and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to
wave her arms vigorously and cry, "Flax, grow," or words to that effect.
When she has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her
partner.
Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer "No." Is it ritual? With some
hesitation we shall probably again answer "No." It is, we think, not a
rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and women.
But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North America,
when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred
Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four times
round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air,
making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain. Then he
upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon the
dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their
faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person
would describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of
primitive ritual." The sole difference between the two types is that, in
the one the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in
the other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially
for the public good.
The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what
concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what is
indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing in
the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says,
"Flax, grow," prove the point. She does what she wants done. Her
intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest possible
impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better still

perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself doing in sheer
sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where the
billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the suspended
ball over