Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/441

 The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy 437 were known in the sword-dance as well as in the morris-dance. 281 The latter name is derived from the Spanish morisco, a Moor. The dancers were thought to represent Moors because their faces were blackened. 28 ' 2 The phallic demons may be traced back to the Vedic age. 283 There were phallic demons also among the German vegetation spirits. 284 The god Freyr of the ancient Norsemen and Germans was worshipped under the form of a phallus. 285 His consort Freya was also represented with this symbol. 286 The phallic demons were regarded as clowns owing to the fact that their function as participants in the ritual was somewhat comical. Their obscene pantomimic acts could not help but strike the on-lookers as funny. They supplied the comic element in the mythical drama. Few morris-dancers are complete without one or more comical figures. The Fasch- ingsnarr (" Carnival-Fool") was also a prominent figure in the medieval procession of maskers. 287 Neither is he missing in the Carnival procession of the modern German cities. He is so essential a Carnival figure that the last day of Carnival is named after him in some parts of Germany. Shrove Tuesday is still known in the Rhineland as Narrenfest or Narrenkirchweih. The fool is a stock figure in the English and German mummers' plays. 288 There is also a crop of fools in the German Carnival comedies (Nos. 13, 14, 17, 20, 32, 38, 44, 110, 116, 119, 132). Michels 289 is inclined to consider the fool in the Carnival come- dies of the close of the Middle Ages to have been substituted by fifteenth century rationalism (?) for a more primitive devil. The prominence given to the devil in the Carnival plays of the suc- 281 Cf. Chambers, loc. cit. 283 Schroeder, op. cit., p. 54. 284 Cf. W. Mannhardt, Korndamonen, p. 25; W.u.F.K., i. 416, 417, 469, 551; Myth. Forsch., pp. 142, I43sqq. 285 Cf. Grimm., op. cit., i. 212, iv. 1354; cf. also H. W. Westropp & C. S. Wake, Ancient Symbol Worship. Influence of the Phallic Idea on the Religions of Antiquity (1874), p. 28. 286 Cf. J. A. Dulare, Die Zeugung in Glauben, Sitten u. Brauchen der Volker, Germ. tr. by F. S. Krauss & K. Reiskel (1909), p. 90. 287 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., ix. 242sg. 288 Ibid., ii. 83, iv. 231*0., viii. 330. 289 Op. cit., pp. IQlsq.