Thus in various grades of goat-like attire the young men and boys traverse the town, stopping here and there, where the steep and tortuous paths offer a wider and more level space, to leap and dance, or anon at some friendly door to imbibe spirituous encouragement to further efforts. In the dancing itself there is nothing peculiar to this festival; the swinging amble, which is the gait of the more heavily equipped, is prescribed by the burden of bells and the roughness of roads. The purpose of the leaping and dancing is solely to evoke as much din as possible from the bells; and prodigious indeed is the jarring and jangling in those narrow alleys when the troupe of dancers leap together into the air, as high as their burdens allow, and come down with one crash. Since I first published[601] an account of these festivities in Scyros, similar celebrations of carnival-time have been reported from other places; at Sochos in Macedonia[602] the scene is almost identical with that which I have described; in the district of Viza in Thrace a primitive dramatic performance was recently observed in which the two chief actors wore similar goat-skins, masks, and bells, and had their hands blackened[603]; and again at Kostí in the extreme north of Thrace there is mummery of the same kind[604]. A scene of the same sort was formerly enacted in Athens also during the carnival, and was known by the expressive name τὰ ταράματα (i.e. ταράγματα), ‘The Riotings.’ A man dressed up as a bear used to rush through the streets followed by a crowd of youths howling and clashing any noisy instruments that came to hand. That this ceremony was originally of a religious character is shown not only by its association with the season of Lent, but by an accessory rite performed on the same occasion. Wooden statues, actually called ξόανα as late as the time of the Greek War of Independence, were carried out in procession; and the well-being of the people was believed to be so bound up with the due performance of these rites, that even during the Revolution, when Athens was in the hands of the Turks, a native of the place is said to have returned from Aegina, whither he had fled for safety, in order to play the part of the bear and to carry out the _xoana_ for the general good[605]. The close connexion of these several modern customs, whether the occasion of them is the Twelve Days or Carnival-time, cannot be doubted. The variation of date is of old standing; for the canon of the Church, on which Balsamon[606] comments, condemns certain pagan festivals on March 1st (approximately the carnival time) along with the _Kalandae_ and _Brumalia_; and the similarity of the dresses, masks, bells, and other accoutrements proper to both occasions proves the substantial identity of the festivals.