Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/217

Rh itself the miser's end; the chase is pursued not for the sake of killing the fox, but for its own sake. Hunting is pursued not for the extermination of foxes: they are preserved in order that hunting may take place. So, too, the drama came to be performed not for the sake of any religious object: the Dionysia of ancient Greece owed their splendour, if not their existence, to the fact that they were the occasion for dramatic performances.

In Greece the satyric drama sprang from some rite in which the performers, the satyrs, were dressed and masked in goat-skins, and represented the goat-shaped spirits who figured in the folk-lore of the Peloponnese. We have therefore to consider whether elsewhere in Europe spirits in animal-shape were represented by masked performers, and whether the rites in which they performed were or came to be associated with the rite by which the restoration of the vegetation-spirit to life was effected.

A brief reference to the denunciations issued by the Church in the first thousand years of the Christian era will suffice to show that throughout Europe spirits in animal shape were represented by masked performers, and that this rite was performed on New Year's day in association with the rite in which the Mummers' Play had its origin. Severian lays special emphasis on the fact that men clad as animals figured as idols or objects of worship, Maximus of Turin testifies that men transfigure themselves into cattle and beasts. St. Peter Chrysologus denounces those who dress up as beasts, horses or cattle, as also does Isidore of Seville. The hanging of a calf-skin or buck's hide on the limbs of the performers must have been the conspicuous feature in this rite, for it is especially condemned in the denunciations of Pacianus, who speaks of the performer who figures as a buck as being well-known; of Caesarius of Aries, who states that those who "play the buck" dress up as bucks. The Council of Auxerre forbids the playing of the buck or calf; and the prohibition is repeated by