Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/432

 428 Rudwin than processions of figures, each of whom explained in couplets his dance costume after having been introduced to the audience by their leader. Of the dances, which have left their traces in the Carnival plays, the sword-dance is the most important. Like the Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks, the Germanic armed dance was fundament- ally mimic in character. 213 We know that the sword-dance was quite popular with the Germanic warrior tribes. Tacitus describes it as the one form of spectaculum to be seen at the gatherings of the Germans with which he was conversant. The dancers, he tells us, were young men who leapt with much agility amongst meancing spearpoints and sword-blades. 214 This dance was fairly common at Shrovetide and other folk- festivals throughout the German lands. The earliest medieval notice of it as a popular Indus is at Nuremberg in 1350, when the Schembartlauf maskers first received permission to perform it. The morris-dance, a variant of the sword-dance, 215 was also quite common among the Germans. 216 The term occurs in the titles of two Carnival plays (Nos. 14, XIV), and is mentioned in Nos. 99 and 31. The dispute between K. MiillenhofP 17 and Chambers 218 as to whether the sword-dance, including the morris- dance, was originally a fertility rite or a war charm is unimport- ant, since the fertility gods were also war- gods, as may be seen from an analogy with old Mexican beliefs. 219 We shall now under- stand why the Nuremberg Schembartlauf maskers carried in the right hand a wintergreen as a symbol of fertility, and in the left a spear as a symbol of victory in war. 220 The symbolical meaning of the swords was later lost, and the dancers were supposed to use them in their fight against the evil spirits of unfruitfulness. 221 The morris-dancers replaced the 213 Cf. Michels, op. cit., p. 84; Wackernagel, KL Schriften, p. 103. 214 Germania, 24. 216 Cf. Chambers, op. cit., i. 199. 216 Cf. Michels, op. cit., p. 84; Creizenach, op. cit., i. 411; Chambers, op. cit., i. 198. 217 "Ueber den Schwerttanz." In: Festgabenfur Homeyer (1871). 218 Op. cit., i. 203; cf. also Sepp., op. cit., p. 96; Cornford, op. cit., p. 60. 219 Cf. Preuss, Archivf. Anthr. xxix. 145, 153. 220 Cf. Michels, op. cit., pp. 99sq. 221 Cf., Frazer, op. cit., ix. 251.