Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/232

186 The general material was white cloth, edged with a border worked by the hand with patterns very like those of the old Greek borders. These borders were generally red and blue. One petticoat was sometimes of silk of a bright colour. The outer petticoat was gathered in at the waist, so as to be full of plaits, a fashion very usual in the early Greek sculpture. Down the side of this garment was a perpendicular stripe of embroidery, meeting the border of the skirt at right angles: this stripe, which occurs constantly in the costume of figures on Greek vases, was called by the ancients paruphe.

I next saw the people of Archangelo dance. The whole village, men and women, joined hand in hand and danced roimd a fiddler in the centre of an irregular crescent. The fiddle, still called, was of a most ancient form, such as is to be found on the very late Pagan and early Christian sarcophagi. It is played with a bow, from which hang little bells. The fiddler was a very curious figure, who accompanied his music with quaint contortions: like Tyrtæus, he was lame. The music was an incessant, monotonous repetition of the same tune, to which the feet of the whole chorus beat time with marvellous precision. The step was a very simple one,—two side steps, the left foot first, then the right foot advanced once; this simple movement repeated eternally. The only merit of the dance consists in the perfect regularity with which the corps de ballet is drilled. This dance is called Rhoditikos choros; but I am told that it is