Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/219

Rh Greece all three forms of cult became dramatic performances, and came to be incorporated in one festival, the Dionysia. Elsewhere in Europe the worship of deceased ancestors, even if it prevailed, as it did in Italy, did not develop in dramatic form; but the cult of vegetation-spirits and that of theriomorphic spirits gravitated first to the festival of the New Year and then to that of Christmas, as in Greece all three forms were attracted to the Dionysia and absorbed in it. But these cults no more originated in the festival of the Dionysia than they did in the festival of Christmas.

What is characteristic of the three cults, wherever practised in the world, is that the celebrants of the rites were men, not women, and that the right of wearing masks was as jealously reserved to men by the Greeks and by their uncivilised ancestors as by any of the many present-day savages who use masks in their religious ceremonies. In civilised Greece there was no acting without masks; and the reason for this is only to be found if we recognise that the wearing of masks in religious ceremonies was a custom handed down to the civilised Greeks from their uncivilised ancestors. If we ask why their uncivilised ancestors, like present-day savages, wore masks, the answer is that masks are worn for no other reason than to express the performer's belief, or to make the spectators believe, that the wearer is the character whom the mask portrays. So long as the belief is genuinely held, the rite—e.g. the rite of the restoration of the vegetation-spirit to life—is regarded as having magical effect. It is not in the opinion either of the celebrant or the congregation a mere piece of acting. But if the performance of the rite continues, even when performers and spectators no longer place any great faith in it, it is on the way to becoming a mere performance; and the merit of the performance comes to be regarded as consisting not in any magical or practical effect, external to the performance, but in the excellence of the acting