Mr Sharp says that traces of it have been found in two southern English counties. Mr Carey found a dance called “Over the Sticks” in Sussex, but it has more of the characteristics of the Scotch sword dance, in which the swords are placed on the ground and the dancer shows his skill by dancing elaborate steps over and between the swords. Sometimes in the Midlands a similar dance is found in which long Churchwarden pipes take the place of the sticks. The sword dances of Northern England are quite different, and are allied to those found in many European countries. These show traces of ancient ceremonial worship and the slaying of the sacrificial victim, and are more in the nature of drama than dance. In _Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda_, by Leopold von Schroeder (1908), there are some very interesting suggestions as to the meaning of these ceremonial sword dances, one of which, referring to the sword dance of Yorkshire called the Giants’ dance, runs as follows (p. 118):—“The leading feature of the dance, which was performed by masked peasants, was that two swords were swung around and on to the neck of a boy without hurting him. The circumstance is of great importance that the leading giant was called Woden and his wife Frigg. This shows us the mythological significance of the dance, clearly and without doubt. Whilst we here see Woden stepping forth as a great dancer, as the chief of a troop of giant dancers, we get a new and important feature in the representation of the god which makes him still more like the wild dancer Rudra-Shiva, a feature of which we hear nothing from other accounts of Wodan-Odin, and yet which is undoubtedly old and real. We must picture to ourselves here not the great heavenly god of the Edda, but rather the still far more primitive though already powerful spirit of the wind, of the soul, and of fruitfulness, from which the great god Woden has developed. Perhaps, too, we may see in the boy round whose neck the sword was swung harmlessly, the new-born, youthful spirit of fruitfulness: whom the swords shall symbolically protect, whose growth and thriving the sword dance, as a magical enchantment bearing fruitfulness, was in all probability intended to promote. In the same way the Curetes held the sword dance round the young Zeus, and the Corybantes round the infant Dionysos, in order to protect him. In my opinion it was also to promote his growth.”