[109]The choir and people took their part in the singing; and dancing, to the old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive song, became common around the cradle, which in time the people were allowed to rock with their own hands.[{47}] “In dulci jubilo” has the character of a dance, and the same is true of another delightful old carol, “Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,” still used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches of the Rhineland. The present writer has heard it sung, very slowly, in unison, by vast congregations, and very beautiful is its mingling of solemnity, festive joy, and tender sentiment:—
“Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen,
Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!
Lasst uns den Geist erfreuen,
Das Kindlein benedeien:
O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!
* * * * *
Lasst uns sein Händel und Füsse,
Sein feuriges Herzlein grüssen!
Und ihn demütiglich eren
Als unsern Gott und Herren!
O Jesulein süss! O Jesulein süss!”[38][{48}]
Two Latin hymns, “Resonet in laudibus” and “Quem pastores laudavere,”[{49}] were also sung at the Kindelwiegen, and [110]a charming and quite untranslatable German lullaby has come down to us:—
“Sausa ninne, gottes minne,
Nu sweig und ru!
Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,
Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,
Tûste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht.”[{50}]
It was by appeals like this Kindelwiegen to the natural, homely instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the masses, making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille, the best historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting passage on the subject: “In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle,” he writes, “the religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost character be opposed to the nature of the German people and their essential healthiness, was felt no longer as something alien. It had become naturalized, but had lost in the process its very core. The preparation for a life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had passed into the background. It was not joy at the promised ‘Redemption’ that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the German has never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful: it was joy at the simple fact that a human being, a particular human being in peculiar circumstances, was born into the world.... The Middle Ages showed in the cradle-rocking ‘a true German and most lovable childlikeness.’ The Christ Child was the ‘universal little brother of all children of earth,’ and they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and rocked Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him in dulci jubilo.”[{51}] There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ Child in other countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille underestimates the religious feeling that is often joined to the human sentiment.
The fifteenth century was the great period for the Kindelwiegen, the time when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem [111]irreverent to the stricter members of the clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in many places no longer rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the altar.[{52}] This usage is described by Naogeorgus (1553):—