The evil Death away to carry;
Come, spring, once more, with us to dwell—
Welcome, O spring, in wood and dell!”
And there is no doubt that similar rhymes used also to be sung in Transylvania, until they were replaced by Lutheran hymns after the Reformation.
Some German archæologists have attempted to prove the Death in these games to be of more recent introduction, and to have replaced the winter of former times, so as to give the ceremony a more Christian coloring by the allusion to the triumph of Christ over death on his resurrection and ascension into heaven. Without presuming to contradict the many well-known authorities who have taken this view of the question, I cannot help thinking that it hardly requires such explanation to account for the presence of Death in these dramas. Nowadays, when civilization and luxury have done so much towards equalizing all seasons, so that we can never be deprived of flowers in winter nor want for ice in summer, it is difficult to realize the enormous gulf which in olden times separated winter from summer. In winter not only were all means of communication cut off for a large proportion of people, but their very existence was, so to say, frozen up; and when the granaries were scantily filled, or the inclement season prolonged by some weeks, death was literally standing at the door of millions of poor wretches. No wonder, then, that winter and death became identical in their minds, and that they hailed the advent of spring with delirious joy, dancing round the first violet, and following about the first cockchafer in solemn procession. It was the feast of Nature which they celebrated then as now—Nature mighty and eternal, always essentially the same, whether decked out in pagan or in Christian garb.
Another drama of somewhat more precise form is the Königslied, or Todtentanz (King’s Song, or Dance of Death), a rhymed dialogue still often represented in Saxon villages all over Transylvania.
Dramatic representations of the Dance of Death were first introduced into Germany before the fifteenth century by the Dominican order, but do not seem there to have taken any very firm root, since we hear no more mention of such performance existing after the middle of the fifteenth century. It is therefore probable that this drama was transmitted, as long as five hundred years ago at least, to the Transylvanian Saxons, who thus have retained it intact long after it had elsewhere fallen into disuse.
The personages consist of an Angel, robed in white, and with a golden wand; the King, attired in purple or scarlet cloak, crown, and sceptre, and followed by a train of courtiers; then Death, who is sometimes clothed in black, sometimes in a white sheet, and who either bears a scythe or a bow and arrows in his hand. On either side of him, by way of adjutants, stand two mute personages, a doctor and an apothecary—the first with powdered head, hanging plait, tricorn hat, and snuffbox in his hand; the latter bearing a basket containing medicine phials. The whole is sung, and the Angel opens the performance with these lines:
Angel. Good people all, come list to me—
New tidings to you will I sing;