I
It is a natural and obvious thing that there should be expressions of joy on the occasion of victory; and, as dancing was one of the ways whereby joy was expressed, it is equally natural that this should have been performed on such occasions. Furthermore, when we find that in the records of these celebrations it is the women who do the dancing, this is only what is to be expected since it is done in honour of the victorious warriors. This is all in the natural order of things; and, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, it would seem that the simple recording of the fact that the celebration of a victory was one of the occasions on which dancing was performed is all that is required. However, this custom is widespread, and has been, and still is, in vogue among peoples in very different stages of culture; and in discussing a widespread custom, such as this, it is always possible that one may discern in the performance of it among less cultured races elements which suggest that originally there was something more in it than appears upon the surface. In other words, the possibility must be reckoned with that the custom as recorded in the Old Testament was in reality the survival of something which was believed to have a decisive effect in bringing about victory. The dance of the Israelite women on these occasions had a threefold purpose; it was a means of expressing joy; it was also the way in which the victorious warriors were honoured; and, most important, it was an act of praise and thanksgiving to Jahwe; so that this type of dance was emphatically a religious one. If, as we hope to offer some grounds for believing, this type of dance was, in its origin, a means of effecting victory by magic, it will be an interesting illustration of magic being, as Mr Marett says, “part and parcel of the ‘god-stuff’ out of which religion fashions itself[286].”
In passing, it may be said that, in spite of the fact that the absence of the able-bodied men would make the women the natural performers in these kind of dances, this public appearance of oriental women witnesses to a very different condition of society from that with which we are familiar as obtaining in the East in later centuries; in other words, the Israelites were in some respects in a less advanced cultural stage than we are sometimes apt to suppose. Not that they were conscious of any other objects in this type of dance than those mentioned; we only mean that at this time immemorial custom, however different the reasons given for its existence, was more likely to be tenaciously held to than when radical changes in religious belief and social and moral conditions had taken place.
The type of dancing with which we are just now concerned has nothing to do with the war-dance, the primary aim of which
seems to be the development of physical excitement, and consequently courage, in the dancing warriors; secondarily, as magical ideas attach themselves, the aim of frightening the enemy by a demonstration of violence is added[287].
In the Old Testament there is no mention of the war-dance. But there was a solemn preparation for war, for it must be remembered that among the Israelites, as among other Semites, there was a religious element connected with the act of warfare. Warriors “consecrated” themselves before entering upon it (Isa. xiii. 3); the phrase for declaring war or entering upon a state of warfare is to “sanctify, or consecrate, war” (Mic. iii. 5, Jer. vi. 4); and battle was prepared for by sacrifice (1 Sam. xiii. 9, 10); moreover, after the battle the spoil, or part of it, was consecrated to Jahwe (1 Sam. xv. 21, 2 Sam. viii. 11, 1 Chron. xviii. 11).
The Israelites, thus, entered battle under the protection of Jahwe; the religious element, therefore, was strongly emphasized.
We proceed now to enumerate the instances in the Old Testament of dancing in celebration of victory.
In Exod. xv. 20, 21 a dance with song accompanied by musical instruments is performed by women in celebration of victory:
And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel (tôph) in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam chanted[288] to them,
Sing to Jahwe, for He is greatly exalted,
The horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea.
Here the dancing and singing have clearly the single purpose of thanksgiving to Jahwe, for the victory is ascribed solely to Him; so that the passage presents the highest development of purpose for which this type of dance was performed. It is the same in Ps. lxviii. 11, 12 (12, 13 in Hebr.), where there is an obvious reference to the custom: “Jahwe giveth the word, the women that publish the tidings (i.e. of victory) are a great host; kings of armies flee; and she that tarrieth at home divideth the spoil[289].” True, there is no mention of singing and dancing here; but if, as we may well believe, it was so well known that the women who celebrated the victory did sing and dance, there was no need to specify it.
In the example given in Judg. xi. 34 it is different, for the dancing and singing here are in honour of the victorious warrior. Jephthah, on his return from his victory over the Ammonites, is met by his daughter and other maidens (her companions are spoken of in verse 38) “with timbrels and with dances[290].” This is further illustrated by the well-known passage 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7:
And it came to pass as they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, that the women came out of the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with timbrels, with joy and with instruments of music (Shalishim, whatever this may mean); and the dancing women sang to one another and said,
Saul hath slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands.
The corruptions in the Hebrew text of this passage need not trouble us as they do not affect the special point with which we are concerned. The same event is referred to in 1 Sam. xxi. 11, where the way in which the custom is spoken of shows that it was a common one: “Did they not sing one to another in the dances...?” See also xxix. 5. In passing, it is worth offering an interesting parallel to this, although the actual dancing is not mentioned. It is given in Pausanias in reference to the victorious Aristomenes after his defeat of the Lacedaemonians:
When Aristomenes returned to Andania the women threw ribbons and fresh flowers on him, and recited in his honour a song which is sung to this day,—
To the midst of the Stenyclerian plain and to the top of the mountain
Aristomenes followed the Lacedaemonians[291].
In the light of these passages we may recall Judg. v. 28-30, where the mother of Sisera is vividly depicted looking from the “window,” together with her “wise ladies,” in expectation of the return of her victorious son with the spoils of battle. It is not an undue stretch of the imagination to suppose that if victory instead of defeat had fallen to Sisera’s lot, we should have had a description of his mother watching the women going forth with timbrels and dances to welcome home the victorious warriors.
Taking these Old Testament passages by themselves, then, there is no reason to suppose that the custom of which they speak is anything more than a simple and natural expression of joy and in one case, at any rate, of thankfulness to Jahwe, for victory in battle, together with an appropriate tribute to the victorious leader. And the same is true in the case of other civilized peoples of antiquity. But it is unnecessary to give illustrations of this type of dance among them because this would throw no light on the original object of it. For this we must go to races in a lower stage of culture, among whom we are so often able to see the antecedents of both the nature and the purpose of customs which among civilized peoples appear in a developed form, and with a different purpose and meaning. If the consideration of a few examples of this type of dance among uncivilized peoples appears to lead us away somewhat from our main point, the digression must be excused on the ground that side-lights do inevitably, at times, cast their rays from a distance.
But before coming to these examples we should like to say a word about the “consecration” for battle, as it is conceivable that this may have had an indirect bearing on the “primitive” object of this type of dance. The Old Testament tells us, as we have seen, that warriors consecrated themselves before entering battle by assisting at a sacrifice[292]. The sacrifice was a means of propitiation which would induce the national God to look favourably upon the expedition and give His help to those who were about to take part in it. But this is a relatively advanced religious conception; there is a long history behind it, and some of the stages in that history are discernible in the preparation for battle among uncivilized races. We will give one instance, of many; more are unnecessary, for the same idea underlies them all. Schoolcraft, quoted by Frazer[293], tells us that
on extraordinary occasions the bravest warriors of the Dakotahs used to perform a dance at which they devoured the livers of dogs raw and warm in order thereby to acquire the sagacity and bravery of the dog. The animals were thrown to them alive, killed and cut open; then the livers were extracted, cut into strips and hung on a pole. Each dancer grabbed at a piece of liver with his teeth, and chewed and swallowed it as he danced; he might not touch it with his hands, only the medicine-man enjoyed that privilege. Women did not join in the dance.
To the savage this acquisition of bravery would be an appropriate preparation for battle. In the many instances of analogous rites the choice of the animal appears to depend upon some quality characteristic of it. But it is possible that there is something more behind this. In the case just cited there are two points which suggest that the choice of the dog was not solely due to its qualities of sagacity and bravery; the sacred dance performed during the eating of its liver, and the prohibition to touch it, point to something sacrosanct about the animal. Frazer points out elsewhere[294] that the custom of killing a god in animal form
belongs to a very early stage of human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connexion with the anthropomorphic gods who have been developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed.
The principle here laid down is only in part applicable to the case under consideration; but it suggests that the dog, which was clearly sacred to the Dakotahs, was not eaten solely on account of its qualities of sagacity and bravery; these happened to be its characteristics which were absorbed by eating it. As a sacred animal it possessed supernatural powers, exemplified especially by its characteristic qualities. In a different stage of the development of this general conception a sacred animal would be partaken of, divine power being thereby acquired, irrespective of any quality that it might possess[295].
“Holy animals,” says Robertson Smith, “and holy things generally, are primarily conceived, not as belonging to the deity, but as being themselves instinct with divine power or life. Thus a holy animal is one which has a divine life; and if it be holy to a particular god, the meaning must be that its life and his are somehow bound up together. From what is known of primitive ways of thought we may infer that this means that the sacred animal is akin to the god, for all valid and permanent relation between individuals is conceived as kinship[296].”
In a still later stage of development, with an advanced conception of deity, a sacrifice to the god would be regarded as the means of securing what was desired, e.g. in the present case, divine aid to victory, as we find in 1 Sam. xiii. 9, 10.
So that it is conceivable that in an earlier stage the Semitic forbears of the Israelites partook of a sacrifice preparatory to battle in the belief that by this means the strength of the god would be imparted to them.
So much then for the question of consecration for battle. We turn now to consider the purpose of the sacred dance in connexion with battle among some of the uncivilized races.