Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/408

 404 Rudwin have been derived from an old pagan period of abstinence intended to promote the growth of the seed, 10 and the Church converted this pagan custom, too, into a Christian solemnity now so rigidly observed as commemorative of the fast of Jesus in the wilderness. The English Lent as the equivalent of the German Lenz is a synonym of spring. The English name for Carnival, it may be argued, points to a Christian origin of this festival. Shrovetide as an appellation for the period in which it was customary to shrive, to confess, as a preparation for the forty days' fast, is, of course, an eccle- siastical term. This argument may be supported, indeed, by the fact that in the German language this festival is known as Fastnacht, which at first sight cannot mean anything else but the eve of the fast, in accordance with the Teutonic practice of com- mencing the day with the evening. In some Rhine districts the term Fastelovend is locally used, Ovend being a vernacular form of Abend (evening). However, the fact of the matter is that the word Fastnacht is a popular corruption of Fass- nacht (vasnacht), as this festival still is colloquially called. Perfectly correct, however, is the form Fasenackt (MHG. vasenaht) 11, by which the Carnival season was universally known in Germany up to quite recent times. The verb of the first component of this word is not taken from fasten to fast but from fasen (dialectical faseln), to talk nonsense, to have great fun. Fasenacht would thus denote an evening of feasting and fooling. 12 The popular interpretation of Fassnacht in medieval times seems to have been the evening of carousing, of diligent application to the Fass (cask). Hans Sachs symbolizes Fass- nacht as a kind of beast of the Apocalypse. He describes the symbolical figure of the licentious festival as a "grosses Tier, dess Bauch ist wie ein fudrig Fass, und es hat ein weiten Schlund." 10 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., ix. 347 sqq. 11 The form Patching, which is still currently common especially in Bavaria and Austria, is derived from MHG. vaschanc, a variant of vasenaht. 12 Cf. Wilh. Wackernagel, Geschichte d. deutsch. Literatur (1848), p. 314nl; Kleinere Schriften ii. (1873) 107. The old derivation of Fastnacht horn fasten is found in Adelung, Worterb. ii. 56 and Grimm, Dt. Worterb. iii. 1353sqq. G. Schmeller, Bayr, Worterb. (Fromann ed. 1872), pp. 763sqq., points to the form vasnacht as found in old documents. [See, however, H. Hirt in Weigand's Deutsches Worterbuctf under Fastnacht. Ed.l