Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
Mule (dance) Mule (dance) The Mule was a dance fad created in 1965 by famed dance instructor Killer Joe Piro based on the earlier "Mule Walk" which was popular in the 1910s. The dominant step of the "mule" is from the "Mule Walk," inspired by the James P. Johnson song of the same title. The dance was popular in the 1910s. The song is in a stride style of music, which is similar to ragtime. Johnson is said to have composed it based on a number of country and square dances he was doing while working at The Jungles Casino around 1913,