Amplification: The Dance

[aras-image:5Fv.006,,14,189,272,15th Century depiction of the Dance of Death]
  The image of death itself is seen as a dancer. The most famous depiction of this in our western culture is that of Holbein, but we have another in ARAS, particularly poignant, of Death and a child, a wood engraving originally copied from 1350, contemporaneous with the Black Death of 1348 which swept across Europe.
 
Death says to the child, 'Creep here, you must now learn to dance. Crying or laughing I hear you with pleasure. Had you a nipple in your mouth it would not help you at this time'. And the child says to his mother, 'Alas, woe, my dear mother. A black man pulls me thither. How do you want to take care of me. Here I have to dance and cannot yet walk!'
(5Fv.006,).

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