Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/138

 of ears of corn bound with white ribbons. The following translation of the ancient hymn is taken from Wordsworth's Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin.

§ 33. This primitive hymn clearly combined the sacred dance (suggestively marked by such a name as the Carmen Saliare) with the responsive chant; and the prominence of the former suggests how readily the processional or stationary hymn might grow into a little drama symbolising the supposed actions of the deity worshipped. Professor Réville, in his interesting study of Mexican and Peruvian religions as illustrating the general growth of religious ideas throughout the world, rightly assigns a very prominent place to the sacred dance. Referring to the Peruvian hymns to the sun which were chanted at great festivals, every strophe ending with the cry "Hailly," or "Triumph," he remarks that "the grand form of religious demonstration among the Peruvians was the dance. They were very assiduous in this form of devotion; and indeed we know what a large place the earliest of the arts occupied in the primitive religions generally. The dance was the first and the