We take now a brief glance at one or two other wedding ceremonies in which the dance figures prominently. We have seen that at Harvest Festivals dances were performed by some peoples for the purpose of making the crops grow. Either by leaping high during the dance, or by the dancers personating the spirits of fertility, or by dances of other kinds, it was believed that the desired effect could be produced. Two ideas often coalesce in such dances: that of a propitiatory act in honour of the god of fertility, and that of an act of imitative magic; but, of course, the two are not always or necessarily combined in the same dance. The purpose of this type of dance, however, is not confined to that of ensuring good crops. We are told, for example, that among the Mandan Indians on the occasion of their great annual festival, a man acts the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, “the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year[340].” To the same circle of ideas belongs that according to which a plentiful supply of fish can be procured by dancing[341]. Instances need not be multiplied. It is evident that the belief was, and probably still is, widespread of dancing being the means of ensuring fertility. Now if this was so in regard to crops and animals, may it not be possible that the same belief existed in regard to human beings? Even though the purpose might have been entirely forgotten the practice might still be continued. It is conceivable that this idea, though forgotten, may underlie the ceremony of “the cleaning of the wheat” to be used at the wedding feast among the Moroccans; this is performed by married women and girls; while some of them are cleaning the wheat others dance and sing, keeping time by clapping their hands; it is so necessary that the dancing should continue during the whole ceremony that when the dancers get tired others take their place[342]. Among the same people the _wazara_ (see p. 184) perform a ceremonial dance in the house of the bride[343]. This may also have been the original purpose of the _epithalamium_ among the Greeks, sung after the wedding feast in the evening before the door of the bridal chamber by a chorus of maidens who danced while they sang; Theocritus refers to this in his eighteenth Idyll (“The Epithalamium of Helen”): And so in Sparta long ago the maids With blooming hyacinths their locks among, Within the halls of fair-haired Menelaus Before the newly-limnèd bride chamber Their dances set—twelve girls, the city’s pride, The flower of Lacedemon’s maids,—what time The younger son of Atreus wooed and won Helen, the darling child of Tyndareus, And took her to his bower. In one accord They sang, with measured beat and woven steps, While loud the halls rang with the marriage-lay[344].