Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/46

 34 President ial Address.

of the mystery function, the central rite of savage initiation. Skill in its performance confers definite social status. When a man is too old to dance the tribal figures, he hands over the duty to a younger performer, and, retiring into the background, ceases to exist sociall)^ Further, the knowledge of the dance is transmitted, as a cherished ritual secret, from one group to another. In their latest book Messrs. Spencer and Gillen ^^ tell us that Vvhen " a party of natives from some distant locality, either within the area occupied by the one tribe or from outside, is visiting a local group, it is customary to show them some special mark of attention, and this often takes the form of enacting some corroboree, which is then made a present to the visitors, who carry it back with them to their own country." The donors cease to take any further interest in it, and never, in any normal condition of the tribe, perform it again."

Thus the study of the folk-dance, for the revival of which we are indebted to Mr. Cecil Sharp, becomes of great importance. Its variations are racial or historical, and, like mummeries, masquerades, riddle and story telling, it once formed part of a group of ceremonies distinctively magical. The same may be said of many of our rural games, like the Cheese-rolling at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, the Good Friday rites at Chilswell Hill near Oxford, or at St. Martin's Hill near Guildford ;^^ and of the mazes found in various parts of the country, which are survivals of pagan celebrations, in which, as in the Olympian Games, the contest was perhaps originally a method of selecting the Fertility King of the year.^-

Again, as a modification or extension of Professor Ridgeway's doctrine that the drama, with its solemn songs and dances, was a representation of propitiatory rites per-

'^'^ Across Auslralia, vol. i., pp. 244 5.

^^ Folk- Lore, vol. xxiii., p. 351 ; W. John.son, Byzvays in British Archaeology, p. 195 ; Id., Folk-Memory, p. 336.

3^ F. M. Cornford, in Miss J. E. Harrison, Themis, pp. 322-3.