Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/227

Rh all events, that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient worship of the animal.

Passing, then, from Arcadia, where the friend of the goddess becomes a she-bear, to Brauron and Munychia in Attica, we find that the local Artemis there, an Artemis connected by legend with the fierce Taurian goddess, is served by young girls, who imitate, in dances, the gait of bears, who are called little bears,, and whose ministry is named , that is, "a playing the bear." They even in archaic ages wore bear-skins, which we have seen to be a common rite in the dances of totemistic peoples, when the worshippers clothe themselves in the skin of the animal whose feast they celebrate. Familiar examples in ancient and classical times of this religious service by men in bestial guise are the wolf-dances of the Hirpini or "wolves," and the use of the ram-skin in Egypt and Greece. These Brauronian rites point to a period when the goddess was herself a bear, and this inference is confirmed by the singular tradition that she was not only a bear, but a bear who craved for human blood.