Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/276

 264 Animal Superstitions and Totemisrn.

game of " Bock," ^ known in England as stag or cock- warning. This game is also a survival of a human sacri- fice that has taken the place of animal sacrifice. The parallel custom is that known as the " Loup vert " in France.^

Blind man's buff is not necessarily a survival of human sacrifice ; there are facts which suggest that the cock has in some parts taken the place of a human victim.^ This, if correct, explains the wide distribution of the Hahnen- schlag.

The Russian, Polish, and Bohemian names of blind man's buff refer to the " old woman ; " in the Kidlington lamb hunt,"* the Westphalian " Vogelschiessen/' '" and other customs, participation is confined to women. (Pos- sibly this only points to a separation of the sexes.) We learn from Pomponius Mela ^ that female priestesses officiated.

The connection of witches with customs involving the wearing of masks is borne out by other evidence. In the Romance languages masca and words apparently connected with it have the following meanings : (a) mask, (b) to blacken the face, (c) witch, (d) helmet. We know that blackening the face was a religious custom ; if not a sub- stitute for the mask it was at any rate a parallel custom. The helmet again was frequently surmounted by an animal's head, horns,''' &c. We have therefore ground for sup- posing that the root of this series of words is the meaning mask. However this may be, it is clear that these mean- ings stand in some relation to each other, and that the resemblances are not due to mere chance. For in the old

' Handelmann, loc. cit.


 * Liebrecht, p. 209.

^ Ehrenloup, Fries. Arch., ii., 6


 * F., viii., 315.

^ Lib., iii., c. 6.
 * De Gubernatis, p. 475 n.

' For refs. v. Arch. Rev., iii., 353.