Various / 2008-07-01 00:00:00
Neither derivation
is improbable; but it is of little consequence to us which is correct.
It may seem strange that such a legend as this of "The Three Dead and
the Three Living," with such a moral, should become the origin of a
dance. But we should remember that in many countries dancing has been a
religious ceremony. It was so with the Greeks and Romans, and also with
the Hebrews, among whom, however, saltatory worship seems, on most
occasions, to have been performed spontaneously, and by volunteers. All
will remember the case of Miriam, who thus danced to the sound of her
timbrel after the passage of the Red Sea; and who that has read it can
forget the account of the dance which King David executed before the
ark, dancing with all his might, and girded only with a linen ephod?
Dancing has always seemed to us to be an essentially ridiculous
transaction,--for a man, at least; and we confess that we sympathize
with David's wife, Michal, who, seeing this extraordinary _pas seul_
from her window, "despised David in her heart," and treated him to a
little conjugal irony when he came home.
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