Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/435

 The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy 431 we behave in a way that might have unpleasant consequences if we were recognized. Neither did they deck themselves in their costumes of leaves and flowers, of hides and horned heads for the beneficial influence of the indwelling divinity, as Chambers conjectures. 233 There can be no doubt that the masqueraders meant to impersonate the powers of fertility in nature. We are well familiar with these field and forest spirits from the classic works of Mannhardt. 234 The tree-worship of the ancient Ger- mans is now well established beyond any possibility of doubt. 235 As a matter of fact, it is well attested for all the great European families of the Aryan stock. 236 Palm Sunday is a relic of ancient tree-worship. The palm was deified by the ancients. Among the trees worshipped in Egypt the palm ranked highest. 237 The fertility spirits were not discarded by primitive man when he conceived the idea of a god. The notion of a god, as Chambers well remarks, 238 is much the old notion of an anthropomorphic elemental spirit, widened, extended, and further removed from sense. "The god does not annul the more bounded and the more concrete personifications of natural forces. They survive in popular credence as his servants and ministers." 239 The masked men and women who performed the ritual were but acting the roles of these ministering spirits of vegetation. They were performing the acts which they had learned from these demons. There must have been a time not so far back in their memories when the god or genius of the rite appeared with his demons among them in order to perform the magical acts necessary for the generation of life in spring. 240 When the superhuman actors had ceased to appear, their devotees assumed their masks and their roles in order to continue the religious practices which they considered wholly indispenable for the renewal and prosperity of vegetation. We do not know at what period in the history of the 134 Roggenwolf u. Roggenhund (1865); Die Kornddmonen (1868); Wdd=* u. Feldkulte der Germanen, Bd. I (1875), Bd. II (1877); Mythol. Forschungen (1884). 235 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., ii. Ssq. 236 7taf., ii. 9. 237 Cf. Cidtus arborum; a descriptive account of tree-worship (1890), pp. 21, 60. 238 Op. tit.,. 1045?. 239 Ibid. MO C/. Preuss, Archivf. Anthrop. xxix. 175; Neue Jahrbiicher, xvii. 161.
 * Op. tit., i. 166.