Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/436

 432 Rudwin human mind the demons were transformed into men. But there can be no doubt that the human performers of the ritual were the successors of the demonic agents of nature. We must bear in mind that it was not the pleasure of imitation, but the reli- gious or rather, the magical purpose which made them act the part of the demons. Worship was in its origin by no means a matter of praise and prayer. Primitive man was wholly concerned with his nutritive needs and had but one object with his rites and ceremonies, namely, to influence the course of nature to supply his material wants. When his god no longer appeared with his (god's) agents on earth for the purpose of carrying out the process of the resurrection of nature, consider- ing him no longer worthy of this boon, he (primitive man), per- force^ had to undertake the work himself. When the original meaning of the masks was lost, they were understood to be a necessary outfit at the expulsion of demons. 241 Primitive man, then, hoped that by assuming a mask he would not be recognized by the demons and might perhaps even be taken as one of them. But it must be said to the credit of our ancestors that in their eagerness to resemble them they often overshot the mark and wore masks fit to terrify the most fero- cious of the demons. The mysterious force which resides in the mask, moreover, was believed to pass into the wearer, to turn him into a mighty demon, and to endow him with the power of banning demons or earning their favor. 242 There is not the slightest doubt that the masked men dele- gated to perform the ritual acts were regarded by the rest of the community as the demons whom they represented. 243 To the primitive mind the actor is, for the time being, the god or demon whom he indicates. The following story from medieval Leipzig will be of interest in the light of our present dis- cussion. It is recorded that when, in 1499, a girl had stabbed during Carnival a masked young man to death because he had teased her, she defended herself in court by declaring that she had not killed a human being, but a demonic creature. 244 The M1 C/. Frazer, op. tit., ix. Ill, 127, 145*0., 213, 251. Ibid.,ix. 382. vii. (1904) 284. 144 Cf. Flogel = Bauer, Geschichte d.Grotesk-Komischen (1914), ii. 219.
 * C/. H. Usener, "Heilige Handhmg," Archiv /. Rdigionswissenschaft