Ancient Art and Ritual by Jane Ellen Harrison
page 51 of 172 (29%)
page 51 of 172 (29%)
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poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done,"
_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites analogous to the story told." These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted. Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive, because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_, "grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of _Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows: "The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of _Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share, the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it." Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria |
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