Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/438

 434 Rudwin of procuring good crops. 250 The maskers often carried lighted torches as a sun-charm as they raced through fields, gardens, orchards, and streets. 251 The Perchta-masquers, as was already noted, 262 carried brooms and whips. Among them was a figure called "tailor," who carried a pair of huge stretching-shears. A counterpart of this article is found among the Hopi of Arizona, whose god appears at their summer festivals with a long pair of wooden stretching-shears. J. W. Fewkes believes that the shears represent the lighting-flash hurled by the god. 253 As human representatives of the vernal spirits of vegetation, the maskers were dressed in leaves and blossoms, branches and flowers. 254 These leaf-clad mummers, the so-called Wilde Maanner und wilde Weiber, were standing figures in the Nurem- berg Schembartlauf. To wear green on St. Patrick's day is a survival of this custom. The flowers and fruits on the spring hats of the women of today are also relics of this ancient practice. In the Carnival processions of Central Europe were also seen men and women with heads of animals. 256 There are clear traces of a stage in which the demons of vegetation were regarded among the ancients as animals. 257 A Christian parallel is to depict Christ in the form of a lamb (Agnus Dei}. The Greek stories of the transformation of gods into beasts point to a ritual custom in which the actors representing the gods were masked as animals. 258 There were beast choruses in Attic comedy. Men and women with heads of animals were seen in the Nuremberg Schembartlauf. In the modern survivals of the ancient spring customs the leaf-clad mummers curiously enough 261 Ibid., x. 107*g., IWsqq., 113^., 179, 339sg. Supra, p. 422. 253 Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1903, p. 90. Quoted by Rademacher in (Hasting's) Encyd. iii. 228b. 254 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., ii. Usqq., iv. 2Q6sqq., 230, xi. 26, viii, 325sqq.; Mann- hardt, W.u.F.K., i. 315*^. 256 Cf. Kleine Geschichte des Nilrnberger Schembartlaufens, p. 10. 256 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., viii. 325^0. 267 Ibid., viii. Isqq. 289 Cf. Kleine Geschichte, etc., loc. cit.
 * Ibid.,iv. 71, 83, viii. 339.