“If fertility and blessing are to be poured out on field, house, and homestead, it is obvious that everything that could hinder or harm must be averted and driven away. When we consider how even at the present time, and still [pg 246] more in times gone by, much that is harmful is attributed to the malevolence of invisible powers, we can readily understand why people should resort to measures which they deem effective for the purpose of disarming these malevolent beings. Now it is a common belief that certain masks possess the virtue of banning demons, and that loud noise and din are a means of keeping off evil spirits or hindering their activity. In the procession of the Perchten we see the principle of the banishment of evil carried out in practice. The people attack the evil spirits and seek to chase them away by putting on frightful masks, with which they confront the demon. For one sort of malevolent spirits one kind of mask appears suitable, and for another another; this spirit is daunted by this mask, and that spirit by that; and so they came to discriminate. Originally, particular masks may have been used against particular evil spirits, but in course of time they were confused, the individual taste of the maker of the mask counted for something, and so gradually it resulted in carving all kinds of horrible, fantastic, and hideous masks which had nothing in common but their general tendency to frighten away all evil spirits.”[586]
The bells worn by the Perchtenmummers may be intended to ban demons. Bells rung to make the grass grow in spring. Bells rung to make the flax grow. Whips cracked to make the flax grow.
In support of her view that the procession of the Perchten aims chiefly at banishing demons who might otherwise blight the crops, Mrs. Andree-Eysn lays stress on the bells which figure so prominently in the costume of these maskers; for the sound of bells, as she reminds us, is commonly believed to be a potent means of driving evil spirits away. The notion is too familiar to call for proof,[587] but a single case from Central Africa may be cited as an illustration. The Teso people, who inhabit a land of rolling plains between Mount Elgon and Lake Kioga, “make use of bells to exorcise the storm fiend; a person who has been injured by a flash or in the resulting fire wears bells round his ankles for weeks [pg 247] afterwards. Whenever rain threatens, and rain in Uganda almost always comes in company with thunder and lightning, this person will parade the village for an hour, with the jingling bells upon his legs and a wand of papyrus in his hand, attended by as many of his family as may happen to be at hand and not employed in necessary duties.”[588] The resemblance of such men, with their bells and wands, to the Austrian Perchten with their bells and wands is, on the theory in question, fairly close; both of them go about to dispel demons by the sound of their bells and probably also by the blows of their rods. Whatever may be thought of their efficacy in banning fiends, certain it is that in the Tyrol, where the Perchten play their pranks, the chime of bells is used for the express purpose of causing the grass to grow in spring. Thus in the lower valley of the Inn, especially at Schwaz, on the twenty-fourth of April (there reckoned St. George's Day) troops of young fellows go about ringing bells, some of which they hold in their hands, while others are attached to their persons; and the peasants say, “Wherever the Grass-ringers come, there the grass grows well, and the corn bears abundant fruit.” Hence the bell-ringers are welcomed and treated wherever they go. Formerly, it is said, they wore masks, like the Perchten, but afterwards they contented themselves with blackening their faces with soot.[589] In other parts of the Tyrol the bell-ringing processions take place at the Carnival, but their object is the same; for “it is believed that by this noisy procession growth in general, but especially the growth of the meadows, is promoted.”[590] Again, at Bergell, in the Swiss canton of the Grisons, children go in procession on the first of March ringing bells, “in order that the grass may grow.”[591] So in Hildesheim, on the afternoon of Ascension Day, young girls ascend the church tower and ring all the church bells, “in order that they may get a good harvest of flax; the girl who, hanging on to the bell-rope, is swung highest by the swing [pg 248] of the bell, will get the longest flax.”[592] Here the sound of the bells as a means of promoting the growth of the flax is reinforced by the upward swing of the bell, which, carrying with it the bell-ringer at the end of the rope, naturally causes the flax in like manner to rise high in the air. It is a simple piece of imitative magic, like the leaps and bounds which the peasants of Central Europe often execute for precisely the same purpose. Once more, in various parts of the Tyrol on Senseless Thursday, which is the last Thursday in Carnival, young men in motley attire, with whips and brooms, run about cracking their whips and making believe to sweep away the onlookers with their brooms. They are called Huttler or Huddler. The people say that if these fellows do not run about, the flax will not thrive, and that on the contrary the more of them run about, the better will the flax grow. And where there are many of them, there will be much maize.[593] In this custom the cracking of the whips may be supposed to serve the same purpose as the ringing of the bells by frightening and banishing the demons of infertility and dearth. About Hall, in the northern Tyrol, the ceremony of the Hudel-running, as it is called, is or used to be as follows. A peasant-farmer, generally well-to-do and respected, rigs himself out in motley and hides his face under a mask; round his waist he wears a girdle crammed with rolls, while in his hand he wields a long whip, from which more than fifty cracknels dangle on a string. Thus arrayed he suddenly bursts from the ale-house door into the public view, solicited thereto by the cries of the street urchins, who have been anxiously waiting for his appearance. He throws amongst them the string of cracknels, and while they are scrambling for these dainties, he lays on to them most liberally with his whip. Having faithfully discharged this public duty, he marches down between rows of peasants, who have meantime taken up their position in a long street. Amongst them he picks out one who is to run [pg 249] before him. The man selected for the honour accordingly takes to his heels, hotly pursued by the other with the whip, who lashes the feet of the fugitive till he comes up with him. Having run him down, he leads him back to the alehouse, where he treats him to a roll and a glass of wine. After that the masker runs a similar race with another man; and so it goes on, one race after another, till the sun sets. Then the mummer doffs his mask and leads the dance in the alehouse. The object of these races is said to be to ensure a good crop of flax and maize.[594]
Certain features in these processions or races of mummers seem to shew that the mummers represent beneficent spirits of fertility, who quicken the seed in the ground and offspring in the wombs of women. The view of W. Mannhardt.
In these races of mummers, whether known as Perchten or Huttler, there are certain features which it is difficult to explain on the theory that the aim of the performers is simply to drive away demons, and that the hideous masks which they assume have no other intention than that of frightening these uncanny beings. For observe that in the last example the blows of the whip fall not on the airy swarms of invisible spirits, but on the solid persons of street urchins and sturdy yokels, who can hardly be supposed to receive the chastisement vicariously for the demons. Again, what are we to make of the rolls and cracknels with which in this case the mummer is laden, and which he distributes among his victims, as if to console them in one part of their person for the pain which he has inflicted on another? Surely this bounty seems to invest him with something more than the purely negative character of an exorciser of evil; it appears to raise him to the positive character of a dispenser of good. The same remark applies to the action of the Perchten who strike women lightly, as a mark of friendship and regard, with the sausage-like rolls which they carry in their hands, or throw them, as a mark of favour, the effigy of a baby. The only probable explanation of these practices, as Mrs. Andree-Eysn rightly points out, is that the mummers thereby intend to fertilize the women whom they honour by these attentions.[595] Here, again, therefore the maskers appear as the actual dispensers of good, the bestowers of fruitfulness, not merely the averters of evil. If that is so, we seem bound to infer that these masked men represent or [pg 250] embody the spirits who quicken the seed both in the earth and in the wombs of women. That was the view of W. Mannhardt, the highest authority on the agricultural superstitions of European peasantry. After reviewing these and many more similar processions, he concludes that if the comparison which he has instituted between them holds good, all these various mummers “were intended by the original founders of the processions to represent demons of vegetation, who by their mere appearance and cries drove away the powers that hinder growth and woke to new life the slumbering spirits of the grasses and corn-stalks.”[596] Thus Mannhardt admitted that these noisy processions of masked men are really supposed to dispel the evil spirits of blight and infertility, while at the same time he held that the men themselves originally personated vegetation-spirits. And he thought it probable that the original significance of these performances was in later times misunderstood and interpreted as a simple expulsion of witches and other uncanny beings that haunt the fields.[597]
Confirmations of this view. The use of bells and swords in these ceremonies.
On the whole this conclusion of an enquirer remarkable for a rare combination of learning, sobriety, and insight, is perhaps the most probable that can now be reached with the evidence at our disposal. It is confirmed by some of the savage masquerades in which the maskers definitely represent spirits of fertility in order to promote the fruitfulness of the earth and of women;[598] and it is supported by the evidence of many other rustic mummeries in Europe, for example, by the English rites of Plough Monday, in which the dancers, or rather jumpers, who wore bunches of corn in their hats as they leaped into the air, are most naturally interpreted as agents or representatives of the corn-spirit.[599] It is, therefore, worth observing that in some places the dancers of Plough Monday, who attended the plough in its peregrinations through the streets and fields, are described as morris-dancers.[600] If the description is correct, it implies that they [pg 251] had bells attached to their costume, which would further assimilate them to the Perchten and other masqueraders of Central Europe; for the chief characteristic of the morris-dance is that the performers wear bells fastened to their legs which jingle at every step.[601] We may suppose that if the men who ran and capered beside the plough on Plough Monday really wore bells, the original intention of this appendage to their costume was either to dispel the demons who might hinder the growth of the corn, or to waken the spirits of vegetation from their long winter sleep. In favour of the view which sees in all these dances and mummeries rather the banishment of what is evil than the direct promotion of what is good, it may be urged that some of the dancers wear swords,[602] a weapon which certainly seems better fitted to combat demons than to prune fruit-trees or turn up the sod. Further, it deserves to be noted that many of the performances take place either on Twelfth Day or, like the celebration of Plough Monday, very shortly after it; and that in the Lord of Misrule, who reigned from Christmas to Twelfth Day,[603] we have a clear trace of one of those periods of general licence and suspension of ordinary government, which so commonly occur at the end of the old year or the beginning of the new one in connexion with a general expulsion of evils.
These masquerades originally intended both to stimulate vegetation in spring and to expel demons.
Surveying these masquerades and processions, as they have been or still are celebrated in modern Europe, we may say in general that they appear to have been originally intended both to stimulate the growth of vegetation in spring and to expel the demoniac or other evil influences which were thought to have accumulated during the preceding winter or year; and that these two motives of stimulation and expulsion, blended and perhaps confused together, appear to explain the quaint costumes of the mummers, the multitudinous [pg 252] noises which they make, and the blows which they direct either at invisible foes or at the visible and tangible persons of their fellows. In the latter case the beating may be supposed to serve as a means of forcibly freeing the sufferers from the demons or other evil things that cling to them unseen.
Application of these conclusions to the expulsion of “the Old Mars”in ancient Rome.