or hobby-horses, because of the sexual excitement thus aroused; and that the sexual emotions play a part in the fascination exerted by this form of amusement everywhere is indicated by the ecstatic faces of its devotees.[204] At the temples in some parts of Central India, I am told, swings are hung up in pairs, men and women swinging in these until sexually excited; during the months when the men in these districts have to be away from home the girls put up swings to console themselves for the loss of their husbands.

It is interesting to observe the very wide prevalence of swinging, often of a religious or magic character, and the evident sexual significance underlying it, although this is not always clearly brought out.  Groos, discussing the frequency of swinging (Die Spiele der Menschen, p. 114) refers, for instance, to the custom of the Gilbert Islanders for a young man to swing a girl from a coco palm, and then to cling on and swing with her.  In ancient Greece, women and grown-up girls were fond of see-saws and swings.  The Athenians had, indeed, a swinging festival (Athenaeus, Bk.  XIV, Ch.  X).  Songs of a voluptuous character, we gather from Athenaeus, were sung by the women at this festival.  J.G.  Frazer (The Golden Bough, vol. ii, note A, “Swinging as a Magical Rite”) discusses the question, and brings forward instances in which men, or, especially, women swing.  “The notion seems to be,” he states, “that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether in the vegetable or in the animal kingdom; though why it should be supposed to do so, I confess myself unable to explain” (loc. cit., p. 450).  The explanation seems, however, not far to seek, in view of the facts quoted above, and Frazer himself refers to the voluptuous character of the songs sometimes sung.

Even apart from actual swinging of the whole body, a swinging movement may suffice to arouse sexual excitement, and may,—­at all events, in women,—­constitute an essential part of methods of attaining solitary sexual gratification.  Kiernan thus describes the habitual auto-erotic procedure of a young American woman:  “The patient knelt before a chair, let her elbows drop on its seat, grasping the arms with a firm grip, then commenced a swinging, writhing motion, seeming to fix her pelvis, and moving her trunk and limbs.  The muscles were rigid, the face took on a passionate expression; the features were contorted, the eyes rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed, while the cheeks were purple.  The condition bore a striking resemblance to the passional stage of grand hysteria.  The reveling took only a moment to commence, but lasted a long time.  Swaying induced a pleasurable sensation, accompanied with a feeling of suction upon the clitoris.  Almost immediately after, a sensation of bursting, caused by discharge from the vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs, followed by a rapture prolonged for an indefinite time.”  The accompanying sexual imagery is so vivid as