Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/445

 The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy 441 of their god, the unshorn or abrocomus Dionysus. 308 In this fashion the actors were imitated by painters and poets is so far as they were attached to the stage. 309 A point which must be raised at this stage of our discussion is the share which the women had in the origin of the Carnival plays. Everything seems to point to the fact that the Carnival originally was in the hands of women. The carrus navalis, after which it has been named, was the sacred symbol of the earth-goddess. The festival originally fell within the Weibermonat (the women's month), as the month of February is called in Germany, for the reason that im Februar jiihren die Frauen das Regiment" (in the month of February the women rule). 310 The last day of Carnival Shrove Tuesday is still known in certain parts of Germany as Weiberfastnacht (Women's Shrovetide) or Altweiberfastnacht (Old Women's Shrovetide). In certain districts of Germany there still exists a dance at Carnival called ein Tanz der Weiberzunft (a dance of the woman's guild.) The reason for the prominence of women in the Carnival ceremonies is not hard to find. We have seen that the earliest ceremonial observances of this sort were connected with agricultural life, and we know from analogy with existing savages that European agriculture in its early stages was an affair of the women. 311 The men, who hunted, worshipped the heavens, whence came the light, but the women, who tilled the soil, carried on earth-worship. The men's divin- ity took on a male form, and the women's a female form. The heaven-father had his counterpart in the earth-mother. The goddess of the fertility of the earth, moreover, was also the goddess of the fertility of women. 312 The first servants of the goddess of fertility were priestesses, or, at a later date, men dressed as women. 313 The procession of men wearing women's clothes, with brooms and fire-works, on Fastnacht at Erlingen 314 points to that earlier stage when the priests had to perform 308 Cf. Tunison, op. cit., p. 85. 809 Ibid. 310 Cf. Pearson, op. cit., ii. 158. 311 Cf. Chambers, op. cit., i. 106. 313 Ibid., i. 169. 318 Cf. Pearson, loc. cit. Ibid.,ii. 30.