Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/37

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The Legends of Krishna.
27

of the naked youths in honour of Apollo, that of the Lacedaemonian maidens, and that of the Thyiads in Athens, the rite of Mother Dindymene and the Kordax on Mount Sipylus.[1] It is repeated in that of the Salii at Rome, and in the ritual of the Floralia. Of modern instances it is only necessary to name the puberty- and wedding-dance among savages, the Zulus for instance, and to this day there is a special wedding-dance in Brittany.[2] It is doubt- less with the same motive that the Madonna del Mateno of Sardinia pirouettes in public, that there is a Whitsuntide dance at Echternach in Luxemburgh, and that the Mexicans dance in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe.[3] We have another survival of the same rite in the Furry or Faddy dance at Helston in Cornwall, which is said to commemo- rate a dragon which once passed over the town without doing any harm, possibly a reminiscence of the great rain- serpent.[4]

Secondly, in the Gopis we may recognise the temple- slaves of the East, concubines of the god, known in India as Devi-dâsis, an institution connected with the custom of marriage to the god, of which I have given many instances in another place.[5] The same custom prevailed in Egypt; and these divine dancers passed into the Greek world as

the Hierodouloi, of whom Strabo tells us there were six

  1. Pausanias, iii., il, 9 ; lO, 7 ; iv., 16, 9 ; x., 4, 3 ; vi., 22, i ; Frazer, ii., 411 ; iii., 320; iv., 95, 147.
  2. Theal, he. cit., 217 ; 8th Series Notes and Queries, vi., 48 1 ; Frazer, Pausanias, iii., 469.
  3. 8th Series Notes and Queries, x., 397 ; 7th Series, ix. , 381 ; 8th Series, X., 115, 202,
  4. 6th Series Notes and Queries, xi., 468, 496 ; 5th Series, v., 507 ; vi., 32 ; 7th Series, ix., 424 ; Home, Everyday Book, ii.. 324 seqq. ; Gentleman's Magazine, loc. cit., 216 seqq.
  5. North Indian Notes and Queries, iv., 9 seqq.; C. Ramachendrier, Collection of Decisions of the High Court and Privy Council on Dancing Girls, Intro., I seqq.; Crooke, loc. cit., ii., 118; Bombay Gazetteer, xviii. (i), 546; Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, (ed. Beaucharap) 133, 592; Yule, Marco Polo, ii., 288 seqq.