No. 5. Dancers.
With regard to dancers, avoidance of contact with the ground or other object is found among African tribes. Seeing that all primitive peoples are much given to dancing, both young and old and of both sexes, whenever any special safeguarding of the dancer is observed it must imply that there is special sanctity, or, if not sanctity, skill in that individual. Generally it is the former, as the dancing is connected with religious practices. Complete concealment of the body is found in some religious dances, and the dancer in such cases is usually a woman.
Among the Mende there is a female society of which the leading women are called Sowo-isia (the second part of the word being the plural termination). These women when dancing have no part of the body uncovered. The head is covered with a mask, and the feet are also fully bandaged, so that it is difficult to call the motions of the figure dancing, at least not graceful dancing. When the performance is over they retire to a hut to unrobe unseen, so that in theory they remain unknown to the spectators. By this dress contact with any outside object is effectually guarded against. Other dancing girls in the same tribe when resting go straight to the line of lookers-on and sit on the knees of some other woman, with their feet resting on the feet of the person beneath, so that no part touches the ground. If they touch the ground it is thought that some of their skill, "Hale," medicine, in the wider application of the word, will leave them. I am not sure, however, that this practice is by any means of general application.
There seems nothing of this nature that applies to men-dancers. It is true that after a dance a dancer who has danced well may be carried home by a friend on his shoulders, but it is simply a fancy proceeding, something like "chairing" a winner in England, and there is no
