apparel and ornaments on their shoulders, and the men did the same. They were decorated to resemble the god of fire; they ascended the teocalli, walked round the sacrificial stone, and then descended and returned to the place where they were to be kept for the night. Each man had a rope tied round the middle of his body, which was held by his guards. At midnight the hair of the crown of the head of each was shaven off before the fire and kept for a relic, and the head itself was covered with a mixture of resin and hen’s feathers. After this the victims burned their clothing, or gave it away to their keepers, and as the morning broke they were decorated with papers and led to the place of sacrifice with singing and dancing. These festivities went on till midday, when a priest of the temple, arrayed in the ornaments of the god Paynal, came down, passed before the victims, and then went up again. They were led up after him in the order in which they had to die. There was then a grand dance of the nobles, led by the king himself, each dancer wearing a high-crowned paper coronet, a kind of false nose of blue paper, earrings of turquoise mosaic, or of wood wrought with flowers, a blue, flowered jacket, and a mantle. Suspended from the neck of each was the figure of a dog made of paper and painted with flowers. In the right hand was carried a stick shaped like a chopping-knife, the lower half of which was painted red and the upper half white. In the left hand was carried a little paper bag of copal. The dance was begun on the top of the teocalli, and finished by the dancers descending and going four times round the courtyard of the temple, after which all entered the palace with the king. This dance took place only once in four years, and none but the king and his lords could take part in it. On this day the ears of all children born during the three preceding years were pierced with a bone awl, and the children themselves passed near or through the flames of a fire. There was a further ceremony of taking the children by the head and lifting them up, “to make them grow,” and from this the month took its name, yzcalli, meaning “growth.”
Ce itzcuintli.—Of this movable feast Sahagun says8: