Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/37

Rh of the naked youths in honour of Apollo, that of the Lacedaemonian maidens, and that of the Thyiads in Athens, the rite of Mother Dindymene and the Kordax on Mount Sipylus. It is repeated in that of the Salii at Rome, and in the ritual of the Floralia. Of modern instances it is only necessary to name the puberty- and wedding-dance among savages, the Zulus for instance, and to this day there is a special wedding-dance in Brittany. It is doubt- less with the same motive that the Madonna del Mateno of Sardinia pirouettes in public, that there is a Whitsuntide dance at Echternach in Luxemburgh, and that the Mexicans dance in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We have another survival of the same rite in the Furry or Faddy dance at Helston in Cornwall, which is said to commemo- rate a dragon which once passed over the town without doing any harm, possibly a reminiscence of the great rain- serpent.

Secondly, in the Gopis we may recognise the temple- slaves of the East, concubines of the god, known in India as Devi-dâsis, an institution connected with the custom of marriage to the god, of which I have given many instances in another place. The same custom prevailed in Egypt; and these divine dancers passed into the Greek world as the Hierodouloi, of whom Strabo tells us there were six