Excerpt from The Sword Dances of Northern England Collected and DescribedIn the Introductions to Parts I. And II. Two conclusions concerning the orig1n and meaning of the sword dance were arrived at: (1) That the dance originally formed part of a ceremony quasi-religious or magical in character, the purport of which was to promote the fertility Of the soil and of all living things, (2) That the central ritual act was the killing and subsequent restoration to life of a man who, from the character of his dress and other considerations, represented, apparently, the animal world.It will be recalled that a great part of the argument turned upon the interpretation of one particular figure of the dance, namely that in which the swords are locked together round the neck of one of the extra characters and then simultaneously Withdrawn by the dancers. The conclusion ultimately reached was that this act denoted a killing or mimic decapitation. Any doubt which remained as to the accuracy of this deduction is removed by the additional evidence supplied by several of the dances described in the following pages. In the Askham Richard dance, for instance, when the swords are withdrawn from the Lock, which is placed round the Fool's neck, the foo1 falls to the ground, feigns death, and is subsequently restored to life by the Besom Betty. A similar incident forms the climax of the Haxby dance, while in the Ampleforth variant the death and revival of the victim form the subject of a lengthy dramatic dialogue. Again, at Escrick, when the swords are released from the Lock and Woody falls to the ground, his hat is tipped off by one of the dancers, and this, I was told, was done expressly to emphasise his death. What the dancers themselves believe is clear enough, because they habitually talk about it as killing the Clown.It should be mentioned that in two cases the doctor, who is summoned to restore the dead man to life, fails in his task, and the revival is effected by, respectively, the Clown and the Besom Betty.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.