[631] Caspari, 10 ‘qui in mense februario hibernum credit expellere ... non christianus, sed gentilis est.’
[632] Frazer, ii. 91.
[633] Frazer, ii. 60.
[634] Sometimes the Pfingstl is called a ‘wild man.’ Two ‘myghty woordwossys [cf. p. 392] or wyld men’ appeared in a revel at the court of Henry VIII in 1513 (Revels Account in Brewer, ii. 1499), and similar figures are not uncommon in the sixteenth-century masques and entertainments.
[635] Frazer, ii. 62.
[636] Ibid. ii. 61, 82; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, 374, 409.
[637] Syr Gawayne and the Grene Knyghte (ed. Madden, Bannatyne Club, 1839); cf. J. L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Gawain, 85. Arthur was keeping New Year’s Day, when a knight dressed in green, with a green beard, riding a green horse, and bearing a holly bough, and an axe of green steel, entered the hall. He challenged any man of the Round Table to deal him a buffet with the axe on condition of receiving one in return after the lapse of a year. Sir Gawain accepts. The stranger’s head is cut off, but he picks it up and rides away with it. This is a close parallel to the resurrection of the slain ‘wild man.’
[638] Frazer, ii. 105, 115, 163, 219; Pausanias, iii. 53; v. 259; Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, 395, give Russian, Greek, and Asiatic parallels.
[639] Frazer, ii. 71; Pfannenschmidt, 302. The victim is sometimes known as the Carnival or Shrovetide ‘Fool’ or ‘Bear.’
[640] Dyer, 93. The Jack o’ Lent apparently stood as a cock-shy from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, and was then burnt. Portuguese sailors in English docks thrash and duck an effigy of Judas Iscariot on Good Friday (Dyer, 155).