Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/433

Rh swords with hoops in the sixteenth century in some parts of Germany. In a similar way the bells which were attached to the caps of the morris-dancers were supposed to be a potent means to expel demons and to awaken the good spirits of vegetation from their winter sleep, whereas, as will be shown later, the swords, the bells, and the black faces, all constituted the characteristic demonic outfit of the performers of the dances as magical rites for the vernal reanimation of nature.

The sword-dancers performed in pantomime the fertility ritual. A few reminiscences of their former role as characters in the ritual drama are still clinging to them. Among the names for the sword-dancers in some parts of Germany we find Grünwald or Wilder Waldmann, which stamp them as representatives of the old vegetation spirits. A great number of the sword-dances in Germany also have the doctor and the fool, two of the stock figures in the ritual drama. In three or four of the sword-dances in Germany a dramatic feature of the mock death and resurrection actually precedes or follows the regular figures of the dances. Similar instances of sword-dances containing a scene of the mimic death and resurrection are on record in ancient Thrace and modern England. In a Bohemian sword-dance the fool has his female counterpart in a Mehlweib. This character is the Germanic Mother Corn (Old Bessy in England). Her name points to a function in the ritual drama, which we will understand by analogy with the summer ceremonies of the American Indians, at which sacred meal is sprinkled by an old woman on the dancers.