the.com/tarantella
The dance you do to sweat out a spider bite before it kills you.
means A fast, whirling southern Italian folk dance in lively 6/8 time, typically accompanied by tambourines.
from Named for the town of Taranto in southern Italy. The popular story ties it to 'tarantism,' a frenzied condition once blamed on the bite of the local wolf spider — the tarantula, also named for Taranto — which villagers believed could only be cured by dancing it out in a sweat-soaked frenzy. Whether the dance cured spider venom or simply gave a name to communal hysteria, the word and the wolf spider share the same hometown.
- medical origin
- Believed to cure venomous tarantula bites by frantic dancing
- name source
- Named for Taranto, a town in southern Italy
- mass mania
- Triggered group dancing epidemics across medieval Europe
- tempo
- Wild 6/8 rhythm that speeds up relentlessly
- likely culprit
- Symptoms blamed on spiders may have been hysteria
tarantella siciliana — traditional sicilian folk dance from southern italy, performed at celebrations and festivals for centuries
tarantism outbreak — mass hysteria in taranto, italy (15th-17th centuries) where people danced uncontrollably, attributed to spider bites