Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/428

 424 Rudwin case a marriage follows his resurrection. We have the descent of Mylitta into the underworld in search of her dead husband Tammuz, of Ishtar into the realm of darkness and death in quest of her lover Adonis, 18 ^ of Demeter, in the Eleusinian mysteries, to the realm of Pluto to visit her daughter Persephone (Proser- pina), of Orpheus, in the Orphic rites, to win back his wife Eurydice from Hades, and of Dionysus to lead his mother Semele out of Acheron. 187 This motive is employed in Attic comedy when Aeschylus is fetched up from the abode of the shades by the god of tragedy. The resurrection of the god is usually followed by his ascen- sion to heaven. We know of the ascension of Tammuz to heaven 188 and of Dionysus with his mother into Olympus. 189 V. THE CARNIVAL COMEDY The ship-procession, although it was, as we have seen, the most prominent and the most permanent feature of the Car- nival, could not have issued in drama. The Carnival-waggon could at best but form the stage for the play, and this, in fact, was the case in a number of towns in the Netherlands and Germany, 190 though not in Nuremberg, which was the real home of the Carnival play. As the ship-cart in the Schembartlauf was, as a rule, burned at the end of the procession together with its occupants, it would necessarily follow that it contained stuffed figures, but no living persons. The old objection of the Kelto- Germanic peoples to the representation of agricultural gods by human beings 191 seems to have continued longer in Nur- emberg than in other German towns. It even extended to those figures of the ritual drama, such as the fool and the doctor, 192 which, as will be shown later, 193 were but the lower demons of vegetation. Iibd., v. Ssq. Ibid., vii. 15. 18 Ibid., v. 225. 189 Ibid., v. 302n4, vii. 12sqq., 32. 190 Cf. Fr. Vogt, "Mittelhochdeutsche Literatur", (H. Paul's) Grundriss d. germ. Philologie 2 ii. 337^.; Creizenach, op. cit., i. 425-sg. 191 Cf. Chambers, op. cit., i. 259. 192 Cf. F. Panzer, Beitrag z. deutschen Mythologie (1848-55) ii. 2495?. Infra, p. 429.