The mingling of Roman and non-Roman customs makes it very hard to separate the different elements in the winter festivals. In regard particularly to animal masks it is difficult to pronounce in favour of one racial origin rather than another; we may, however, infer with some probability that when a custom is attached not to Christmas or the January Kalends but to one of the November or early December feasts, it is not of Roman origin. For, as the centuries have passed, Christmas and the Kalends—the Roman festivals ecclesiastical and secular—have increasingly tended to supplant the old northern festal times, and a transference of, for instance, a Teutonic custom from Martinmas to Christmas or January 1, is far more conceivable than the attraction of a Roman practice to one of the earlier and waning festivals.
Let us take first the horse-forms, seemingly connected with that sacrificial use of the horse among the Teutons to which Tacitus and other writers testify.[{51}] “Old Hob” is doubtless one form of the hobby horse, so familiar in old English festival customs. His German parallel, the Schimmel, is mostly formed thus in the north: a sieve with a long pole to whose end a horse's head is fastened, is tied beneath the chest of a young man, who goes on all fours, and some white cloths are thrown over the whole. In Silesia the Schimmel is formed by three or four youths. The rider is generally veiled, and often wears on his head a pot with glowing coals shining forth through openings that represent eyes and a mouth.[{52}] In Pomerania the thing is called simply Schimmel,[{53}] in other parts emphasis is laid upon the rider, and the name Schimmelreiter is given. Some mythologists have seen in this rider on a white horse an impersonation of Woden on his great charger; but it is more likely that the practice simply originated in the taking round of a real sacrificial horse.[{54}] The Schimmelreiter is often accompanied by a “bear,” a youth dressed in straw who plays the part of a bear tied to a pole.[{55}] He may be connected with some such veneration of the animal as is suggested by the custom still surviving at Berne, of keeping bears at the public expense.
To return to Great Britain, here is an account of a so-called [201]“hodening” ceremony once performed at Christmas-time at Ramsgate: “A party of young people procure the head of a dead horse, which is affixed to a pole about four feet in length, a string is tied to the lower jaw, a horse-cloth is then attached to the whole, under which one of the party gets, and by frequently pulling the string keeps up a loud snapping noise and is accompanied by the rest of the party grotesquely habited and ringing hand-bells. They thus proceed from house to house, sounding their bells and singing carols and songs.”[{56}]
Again, in Wales a creature called “the Mari Llwyd” was known at Christmas. A horse's skull is “dressed up with ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man who is concealed under a large white cloth. There is a contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and bites everybody it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on payment of a fine.”[{57}] The movable jaws here give the thing a likeness to certain Continental figures representing other kinds of animals and probably witnessing to their former sacrificial use. On the island of Usedom appears the Klapperbock, a youth who carries a pole with the hide of a buck thrown over it and a wooden head at the end. The lower jaw moves up and down and clatters, and he charges at children who do not know their prayers by heart.[{58}] In Upper Styria we meet the Habergaiss. Four men hold on to one another and are covered with white blankets. The foremost one holds up a wooden goat's head with a movable lower jaw that rattles, and he butts children.[{59}] At Ilsenburg in the Harz is found the Habersack, formed by a person taking a pole ending in a fork, and putting a broom between the prongs so that the appearance of a head with horns is obtained. The carrier is concealed by a sheet.[{60}]
In connection with horns we must not forget the “horn-dance” at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, held now in September, but formerly at Christmas. Six of the performers wear sets of horns kept from year to year in the church.[{61}] Plot, in his “Natural History of Staffordshire” (1686, p. 434) calls it a “Hobby-horse Dance from a person who carried the image of a horse between his legs, made of thin boards.”[{62}]
[202]In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway creatures resembling both the Schimmelreiter and the Klapperbock are or were to be met with at Christmas. The name Julebuk (yule buck) is used for various objects: sometimes for a person dressed up in hide and horns, or with a buck's head, who “goes for” little boys and girls; sometimes for a straw puppet set up or tossed about from hand to hand; sometimes for a cake in the form of a buck. People seem to have had a bad conscience about these things, for there are stories connecting them with the Devil. A girl, for instance, who danced at midnight with a straw Julebuk, found that her partner was no puppet but the Evil One himself. Again, a fellow who had dressed himself in black and put horns on his head, claws on his hands, and fiery tow in his mouth, was carried off by the Prince of Darkness whose form he had mimicked.[{63}] The association of animal maskings with the infernal powers is doubtless the work of the Church. To the zealous missionary the old heathen ritual was no mere foolish superstition but a service of intensely real and awful beings, the very devils of hell, and one may even conjecture that the traditional Christian devil-type, half animal half human, was indirectly derived from skin-clad worshippers at pagan festivals.
Martinmas.
Between All Souls’ Day and Martinmas (November 11) there are no folk-festivals of great importance, though on St. Hubert's Day, November 3, in Flemish Belgium special little cakes are made, adorned with the horn of the saint, the patron of hunting, and are eaten not only by human beings but by dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.[{64}] The English Guy Fawkes Day has already been considered, while November 9, Lord Mayor's Day, the beginning of the municipal year, may remind us of the old Teutonic New Year.
Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be expected, since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old beginning-of-winter festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus surprised the Marsi in A.D. 14.[{65}]
The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting. [203]Economic causes, as we saw in [Chapter VI.], must have made the middle of November a great killing season among the old Germans, for the snow which then began rendered it impossible longer to pasture the beasts, and there was not fodder enough to keep the whole herd through the winter. Thus it was a time of feasting on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is suggested by the Anglo-Saxon name given to November by Bede, Blot-monath, sacrifice-month.[{66}]