COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FEAST OF FOOLS AND THE URINE DANCE.
In the above description may be seen that the principal actors (taking possession of the church during high mass) had their faces daubed and painted, or masked in a harlequin manner; that they were dressed as clowns or as women; that they ate upon the altar itself sausages and blood-puddings. Now the word “blood-pudding” in French is boudin; but boudin also meant “excrement.”[5] Add to this the feature that these clowns, after leaving the church, took their stand in dung-carts (tombereaux), and threw ordure upon the by-standers; and finally that some of these actors appeared perfectly naked (“on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits”), and it must be admitted that there is certainly a wonderful concatenation of resemblances between these filthy and inexplicable rites on different sides of a great ocean.