Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/444

 440 Rudwin pleasure and with all sorts of additions to the great delight of the spectators. They gladly exhibited their mimic talent, for they were in a happy mood and in the very swing of it, as it were. We learn from Semos that the phallophori after having sung the phallic songs ran forward and ridiculed persons in the aud- ience. 305 Among the Zuiii there is more or less fun-making throughout all their sacred dances. 306 We shall not wonder at the fun-making acts in connection with the sacred fertility rites when we bear in mind that fun was not excluded even from the Church service, and that comic scenes taken from real life alter- nated in the ecclesiastical drama with episodes drawn from the life and passion of Christ. Furthermore, just as some of these comic scenes were separated in the course of time and performed independently from the Church plays, so some of the farcical acts broke loose from the ritual dramas, and served as entertain- ments for our ancestors in their homes and banquet halls. It is very evident, therefore, that all drama is of demonic origin. We must now admit that the Church Fathers were indeed right when they declared that all dramatic arts come from the devil (Pseudo-Cyprian, Sped. 4; Tatian, Oral, ad Graec. 22). The Carnival comedy is, as we have seen, of country origin. Peasants were its first actors. When the Carnival festival, however, was adopted by the towns, the burghers replaced the peasants as Carnival players. It was in their hands that the drama could develop as an art. Among the country people the comic pieces would have remained to the present day mere shows and games just as has been the case with the ritual parts. The actors soon broke with the tradition and laid aside the phallus and the black mask. The phallus was dropped in the West earlier than in the East. Reich has, however, brought to evi- dence the fact that the mime retained the phallus for many centuries of our common era. 307 The long hair of the actors is a modern survival of their original demonic appearance. The demons in the Dionysiac rites preserved their hair in honor 305 Cf. Cornford, op. cit., p. 43. 306 Cf. J. W. Fewkes, "A Few Summer Ceremonials at Zuni Pueblos," Journal of Am. Ethn. & Arch., i. 22; cf. also vol. ii. for similar ceremonies among the Tusayan Pueblos. 307 Cf. H. Reich. Der Mimus. Ein literarisch-entwickelungsgeschichtlicher Versuch (1903), pp. tfsqq., 258, 502 sq.