Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/437

 The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy 433 demonic nature of the masks was, indeed, plainly evident to their wearers as well as to the rigorists among the churchmen, who passionately inveighed against them. A statute of the ninth century forbids any presbyter to wear masks of demons, for "all this is devilish." Other records of the same century speak of the monks mumming as wolves, foxes, or bears, and of "other diabolical masquerades." 245 It has already been stated that the Carnival-waggon was called by its clerical opponents malignorum spirituum execrabile domicilium (the accursed habitation of evil spirits). 246 Henricus Lubertus (Lubbert), a Protestant clergyman, who lived in the second half of the seventeenth century, could find no better title for his diatribe against the. whole Carnival season than Der Fastnachtsteufel (The Shrovetide Devil.) The Low German name for the pro- cession of maskers is Schwodiivel, i.e. running about in a diaboli- cal mask. Processions of maskers of this type were common in all parts of Germany in the Middle Ages. 247 The best known of these medieval German processions is the Nuremberg Schembartlauf, which existed from about the middle of the fourteenth century down to the time of Hans Sachs. 248 Schembart means a bearded mask (MHG. scheme is mask). By popular etymology the word was later changed to Schonbart. A parallel custom is the Perch- tenlaufin the Alpine regions of Germany, which, at first, probably was held at the Carnival season, but later transferred in some parts of the Tyrol to Perchta's Day, which is Twelfth Night, or Epiphany Day. 249 Schembartlauf en and Perchtenlaufen would point to the custom of running and leaping for the purpose 246 Cf. Pearson, op. tit., ii. 282. 246 Supra, p. 413. 247 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., ii. 120, viii. 325, ix. 250. 248 On this procession see Kleine Geschichte des Nurnberger Schembartlauf ens (1761); Number gisches Schonbart-Buch und Gesellen-Stechen (1785), Flogel- Bauer, Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen (1914) ii. 236sqq.&Nat.-Zg. 27.1.1889. 249 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., ix. 242, 2455?. On the Perchtenlauf see Andree- Eysn, "Die Perchten im Salzburgischen," Archiv f. Anthropologie xxxi. (1905) and Flogel-Bauer, op. tit., ii. 249.^. The writer's view in regard to the demonic aspect of the Carnival maskers is shared, at least as far as the Perchta-racers are concerned, by Waschnitius, op. tit., p. 160. This monograph did not fall into the writer's hands until after the completion of his manuscript.