Crossword-Solution: TRIPUDIUM 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 14

Their song was chanted in the temple with closed doors, accompanied by that peculiar dance which was termed the tripudium, from its containing three beats.

With ceremonial dancing (_tripudium_) they moved along the boundary-marks and made the farmer's most complete offering of the pig, sheep, and ox (_suovetaurilia_): the fruits of the last year and the new harvest (_aridae et virides_) played a large part in the ceremonial, and a solemn litany was recited for the aversion of every kind of pest from the crops.

Later others were included, and with the army in the field it became the regular practice to take the auspices from the feeding of the sacred chickens (_pulli_): the best sign being obtained if, in their eagerness to feed, they let fall some of the grain from their beaks (_tripudium solistimum_)--a result not difficult to secure by previous treatment and a careful selection of the kind of grain supplied to them.

They cause whirlwinds on a sudden and tempestuous storms, which, though our meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind, they are more often caused by those aerial devils in their several quarters; for they ride on the storms as when a desperate man makes away with himself, which, by hanging or drowning, they frequently do, as Kormannus observes, _tripudium agentes_, dancing and rejoicing at the death of a sinner.

Basil, among other fathers, approved of imitating the _tripudium angelorum_――the dance of the angelic choirs that “Sing, and, singing in their glory, move.” At the Cathedral of Seville the choir-boys, called _Los Seises_――the Sixes――used to dance to the sound of ivory castanets before the Host on Corpus Christi, and in the chapel of the Virgin on the 8th of December, when they were dressed in blue and white.