In fact, the creation of “etiological” or justificatory history and mythology is by no means limited to the department of religious ritualism. Even more trivial actions, such as games and pastimes, will, amongst tribes with developed historical tendencies, be connected with imaginary occurrences, which latter will be found to account for every detail in such games and pastimes. With the Cherokee Indians, for example, we find a most intricate animal story, in which the action of the bat, the eagle, and other creatures closely correspond to the movements of the different participators in the national ball-play.[236] Although much may be said in favour of the ingenious hypothesis of Professor Groos, who suggests that military games, such as chess and draughts, may have been developed from dramatic narratives of real battles, supplemented perhaps with maps drawn in the sand and simple symbols—stones, pebbles, etc.—representing the various armies and soldiers;[237] and although it may reasonably be assumed that the beasts in the animal story of the Cherokees represents the _totems_ of some old Indian chiefs,—a story like this must be considered as secondary, in its details at least, to the play. More artificial still it sounds when the Moondahs in Bengal affirm that their popular Easter-game of pushing eggs the one against the other in reality serves as a means of commemorating the feats of Sing Bonga, who, with a single hen’s egg, crushed the iron globes of his rivals.[238] Unfortunately, it is but seldom that the commemorative motive shows its fictitious nature with so much evidence as in this game. In most cases there will always be a doubt as to whether the religious drama, poem, or design was originally intended as a means of conveying knowledge of some real or legendary event, or whether the idea of these events was derived from a simple game, a propitiative poem, or a magical design. We have quoted some instances in which the historical interpretation is secondary only. But there could easily be adduced other instances in which the opposite is the case. Ancient poems, whose historical and legendary character is quite incontestable, may often be used as charms in magical ceremonies.[239] It seems quite impossible therefore to pronounce any definite judgment as to priority between myth and ceremony without special investigation of every single case. In the department of pictorial art it is scarcely less difficult to separate the genuinely commemorative elements from the close interweaving of different motives, which call into existence a work of art.