Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/407

 The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy 403 characteristic of the Germanic races. The reason, however, why their religious practices did not develop like the Dionysiac rites is not due to an inherent fault, but to an external cause. The Church hampered the dramatic evolution of the Germanic folk-customs by its intervention with a more complicated drama based on its own ritual and imported from the East. 6 But while there is general agreement in regard to the pagan descent of the Carnival comedy, there is great diversity of opinion concerning the particular ceremonies in which it might have originated. It will be the object of this essay to inquire into the ritual origins of the Carnival comedy. A discussion of the origin and nature of the Carnival must naturally precede our inquiry. II. THE ORIGIN OF CARNIVAL The Carnival, be it understood, is, notwithstanding its present connection with a Christian observance, of pagan origin. In its original form it was a heathen agricultural festival, and, like all feasts and festivals in the pastoral and agricultural days of the Irano-European peoples, was originally connected with a change in Nature. However, it had no relation to the winter solstice, as is generally assumed. The Germane-Keltic tribes had no solstitial festival, for they knew nothing of solstices. 7 In its origin the Carnival was a ploughing and sowing festival, 8 and formed a part of the public cult of the fertilization spirit. The Church did not institute it, but adopted it from the heathen ritual and changed it into a Christian observance as was done with many other indigenous festivals surviving in all essentials beneath a new faith which was but skin deep. 9 Room was found all the more readily for this festival in the scheme of the Church, for it offered the converts an opportunity to recompense them- selves for the forty days of abstinence, which were ahead of them. Moreover, the connection between Carnival and Lent may also go back to pre-Christian days. Lent, perhaps, may 8 Cf. J. S. Tunison, Dramatic Traditions of the Dark Ages (1907), p. 307. 7 Cf. Chambers, op. cit., i. 228. 8 Cf. J. H. Sepp, Die Religion der alten Deutschen und ihr Fortbestand in Volkssagen und Festbr auchen bis zur Gegenwart (1890), p. 55; Frazer, op. cit., x. 347; Chambers, op. cit., i. 114; Cornford, op. cit., p. 51. 9 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., v. 308.