JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,217
The Greeks had Funeral Dances and indeed Funeral Games but they were essentially elegant and respectful tributes to the deceased. Then there was the Medieval notion of a Dance of the Dead but that was a memento mori, seeing the living and the dead as bound by their common mortality*.
Dancing on someone's grave as an insult seems to be an impromptu act, a kind of desecration. I can't immediately think of many classic cases from literature, though there probably are a few - the Munchkins come close, and there must be other dramatic celebrations of defeated demonic figures. It is mainly in the context of the famous old joke, referred to above that the idea continues to circulate and maybe appeal.
*Goethe's 19th Century version is comic-grotesque as is the tone poem by Saint-Saëns - originally a song to words by one Cazalis. But both retain the traditional theme that rich and poor, young and old must dance to Death's tune:
http://www.poetry-archive.com/g/the_dan ... _dead.html
Dancing on someone's grave as an insult seems to be an impromptu act, a kind of desecration. I can't immediately think of many classic cases from literature, though there probably are a few - the Munchkins come close, and there must be other dramatic celebrations of defeated demonic figures. It is mainly in the context of the famous old joke, referred to above that the idea continues to circulate and maybe appeal.
*Goethe's 19th Century version is comic-grotesque as is the tone poem by Saint-Saëns - originally a song to words by one Cazalis. But both retain the traditional theme that rich and poor, young and old must dance to Death's tune:
http://www.poetry-archive.com/g/the_dan ... _dead.html