[19]
The Sword Dance proper appears to have been preserved mostly in the
North of England, and in Scotland. Mr Cecil Sharp has found four
distinct varieties in Yorkshire alone. At one time there existed a
special variant known as the Giants' Dance, in which the leading
characters were known by the names of Wotan, and Frau Frigg; one
figure of this dance consisted in making a ring of swords round the
neck of a lad, without wounding him.
Mr E. K. Chambers has commented on this as the survival of a sacrificial
origin.[20] The remarks of this writer on the Sword Dance in its
dramatic aspect are so much to the point that I quote them here. "The
Sword Dance makes its appearance, not like heroic poetry in
general, as part of the minstrel repertory, but as a purely popular
thing at the agricultural festivals. To these festivals we may
therefore suppose it to have originally belonged." Mr Chambers goes
on to remark that the dance of the Salii discussed above, was clearly
agricultural, "and belongs to Mars not as War god, but in his more
primitive quality of a fertilization Spirit."
In an Appendix to his most valuable book the same writer gives a full
description, with text, of the most famous surviving form of the Sword
Dance, that of Papa Stour (old Norwegian Papey in Stora), one of the
Shetland Islands.
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