Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to overcome.  Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the quite young from sheer joie de vivre, and essentially inappropriate to the mature.  But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word nolavoa means both “to work” and “to dance.”  An old man will reproach a young man saying, “Why do you not go and work?” (nolavoa).  He means “Why do you not dance instead of looking on?” It is strange to us to learn that among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to mature manhood, so the number of his “dances” increase, and the number of these “dances” is the measure pari passu of his social importance.  Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, because he cannot dance; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to another and a younger.

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Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day.  In Swabia and among the Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this will make the hemp grow tall.  In many parts of Germany and Austria the peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller will be the flax that year.  There is happily little possible doubt as to the practical reason of this mimic dancing.  When Macedonian farmers have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air and, catching them again, exclaim, “May the crop grow as high as the spade has gone.”  In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday.  The hoop is decked with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell and some flax.  While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her arms vigorously and cry, “Flax, grow,” or words to that effect.  When she has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her partner.

Is this art?  We shall unhesitatingly answer “No.”  Is it ritual?  With some hesitation we shall probably again answer “No.”  It is, we think, not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and women.  But take another instance.  Among the Omaha Indians of North America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four times round it.  One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain.  Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their faces.  This saves the corn.  Now probably any dispassionate person would describe such a ceremonial as “an interesting instance of primitive ritual.”  The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially for the public good.