Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/146

 the name of Yahveh in the dance." So important was song in national tradition and worship, that not only do we find the Hebrew law-chronicle appealing to folk-songs as among the earliest sources of the history of the tribes, but the teaching of song (possibly a leading duty of the early Nâbîs) is directly ordained by the priestly law-book. Old polytheistic worship, against which Yahvism waged a long conflict, also possessed the choral song-dance as the essence of its ceremonial. Thus, we find the early Hebrews before the idol of the calf singing and dancing songs of such a rude description that it was possible for them to be mistaken for shouts of war. The violent character of the sacred dance among the Hebrews reminds us of the Peruvian Raymi; and a still more interesting parallel is observable in the degradation which such dancing seems to have undergone among the Hebrews as among the Peruvians. The Nâbîs combined dance and song; for example, Miriam "the prophetess," Nebîah, takes a timbrel in her hand while the women "go out after her with timbrels and with dances." "To play the Nâbî" apparently meant to sing, dance, and violently gesticulate, so violently indeed that the verb nâbâ is used of madness and excited raving. In a well-known passage of Hebrew story this violence of gesticulation is very prominently brought out. Saul has sent messengers to seize David at Naioth, a centre of Nâbî culture, and the king's messengers, thrice sent, have thrice been infected by the spirit of the place and joined in the sacred festival. "Then Shâûl himself went to the high place and came to the large well that is by the