will be found a pretty full description of the Lords of Misrule, but the
only reference of value for our purposes is one from Polydorus Virgil,
who recognized the derivation of these Feasts from the Roman Saturnalia.
“There is nothing,” says the author of the essay to retrieve the Ancient
Celtic, “that will bear a clearer demonstration than that the primitive
Christians, by way of conciliating the Pagans to a better worship,
humored their prejudices by yielding to a conformity of names and even
of customs, where they did not interfere with the fundamentals of the
Christian doctrine.... Among these, in imitation of the Roman Saturnalia,
was the Festum Fatuorum, when part of the jollity of the season was
a burlesque election of a mock-pope, mock-cardinals, mock-bishops,
attended with a thousand ridiculous and indecent ceremonies, gambols, and
antics, such as singing and dancing in the churches, in lewd attitudes,
to ludicrous anthems, all allusively to the exploded pretensions of
the Druids whom these sports were calculated to expose to scorn and
derision. This Feast of Fools,” continues he, “had its designed effect,
and contributed perhaps more to the extermination of these heathens than
all the collateral aids of fire and sword, neither of which were spared
in the persecution of them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872,
vol. i. p. 36.)
Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” edition of London, 1855, article
“Festival of Fools,” in lib. iv. cap. 3, contains nothing not already
learned.
Jacob Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. p.
92, has the following:—
“The collection of the Letters of Boniface has a passage lamenting the
confusion of Christian and heathen rites into which foolish or reckless
priests had suffered themselves to fall.”
Banier shows that on the First of January the people of France ran about
the streets of their towns, disguised as animals, masked and playing all
sorts of pranks. This custom was derived from the Druids and lasted in
full vigor “to the twelfth century of the Christian era.”—(“Mythology,”
Banier, vol. iii. p. 247.)
“The heathen gods even, though represented as feeble in comparison with
the true God, were not always pictured as powerless in themselves; they
were perverted into hostile, malignant powers, into demons, sorcerers,
and giants, who had to be put down, but were nevertheless credited with
a certain mischievous activity and influence. Here and there a heathen
tradition or a superstitious custom lived on by merely changing the
names and applying to Christ, Mary, and the saints what had formerly
been related and believed of idols.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm
(Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. Introduction, page 5.) ... “At the
time when Christianity began to press forward, many of the heathen seem
to have entertained the notion, which the missionaries did all in their
power to resist, of combining the new doctrine with the ancient faith
and even of fusing them into one.—(Idem, p. 7.) ... Of Norsemen, as well
as of Anglo-Saxons, we are told that some believed at the same time in
Christ and in heathen gods, or at least continued to invoke the latter in
particular cases in which they had formerly proved helpful to them. So
even by Christians much later the old deities seem to have been named and
their aid invoked in enchantments and spells.—(Idem, pp. 7 and 8.) ...
The Teutonic races forsook the faith of their fathers very gradually and
slowly from the fourth to the eleventh century.”—(Idem, p. 8.)
On the following pages, 9, 10, and 11, Grimm shows us how little
is really known of the religions of ancient Europe, whether of the
Latin or of the Teutonic or Celtic races; he alludes to “the gradual
transformation of the gods into devils, of the wise women into witches,
of the worship into superstitious customs.—(Idem, p. 11.) Heathen
festivals and customs were transformed into Christian.—(Idem, p. 12.) ...
Private sacrifices, intended for gods or spirits, could not be eradicated
among the people for a long time, because they were bound up with customs
and festivals, and might at last become an unmeaning practice.”—(Idem,
vol. iii. p. 1009.)
“It is a natural and well-known fact that the gods of one nation become
the devils of their conquerors or successors.”—(Folk-Medicine, William
George Black, London, 1883, p. 12.)
“Few things are so indestructible as a superstitious belief once
implanted in human credulity.... The sacred rites of the superseded
faith become the forbidden magic of its successors.”—(“History of the
Inquisition,” Henry Charles Lea, New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 379.)
“Its gods become evil spirits.”—(Idem, p. 379.) ... The same views are
advanced in Madame Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled.”
THE “SZOMBATIAKS” OF TRANSYLVANIA.
In further explanation of the tenacity with which older cults survive
long after the newer religions seem to have gained predominance in
countries and nations, it is extremely appropriate to introduce a passage
from an article in the “St. James’ Gazette,” entitled “Crypto-Jews,”
reprinted in the Sunday edition of the “Sun,” New York, sometime in
October, 1888.
The writer, in speaking of the Szombatiaks of Transylvania, remarks: “The
crypto-Judaism of the Szombatiaks was suspected for centuries, but not
until twenty years ago was it positively known. Then, on the occasion
of a Jewish emancipation act for Hungary, the sturdy old peasants,
indistinguishable in dress, manners, and language from the native
Szeklers, sent a deputation to Pesth to ask that their names might be
erased from the church rolls. They explained that they were Jews whose
forefathers had settled in Hungary at the time of the expedition of Titus
to Dacia. Though baptized, married, and buried as Christians, maintaining
Christian pastors, and attending Christian churches, they had always in
secret observed their ancient religion.”
It is a matter of surprise to find so little on the subject of the Feast
of Fools in Forlong’s comprehensive work on Religion. All that he says
is that “the Yule-tide fêtes were noted for men disguising themselves as
women, and _vice versa_, showing their connection with the old Sigillaria
of the Saturnalia, which, formerly observed on the 14th of January, were
afterwards continued to three, four, five, and some say seven days, and
by the common people even until Candlemas Day. Both were prohibited when
their gross immoralities became apparent to better educated communities.
‘In Paris,’ says Trusler in his ‘Chronology,’ ‘the First of January was
observed as Mask Day for two hundred and forty years, when all sorts of
indecencies and obscene rites occurred.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong,
London, 1883, vol. i. p. 434.)
In addition to the above, there is evidence of its survival among the
rustic population of Germany. Brand enumerates many curious practices of
the carnival just before Ash Wednesday, and even on that day, after the
distribution of the ashes. Young maidens in Germany were carried “in a
cart or tumbrel” by the youths of the village to the nearest brook or
pond, and there thoroughly ducked, the drawers of the cart throwing dust
and ashes on all near them. In Oxfordshire it was the custom for bands
of boys to stroll from house to house singing and demanding largess of
eggs and bacon, not receiving which, “they commonly cut the latch of the
door or stop the key-hole with dirt” (“Popular Antiquities,” London,
1872, vol. i. pp. 94 _et seq._, article “Ash Wednesday”), “or leave some
more nasty token of displeasure” (idem). This may have been a survival
from the Feast of Fools. Brand refers to Hospinian, “De Origine Festorum
Christianorum,” “for several curious customs and ceremonies observed
abroad during the three first days of the Quinquagesima week” (p. 99).
Turning from the Teutonic race to the Slav, we find that the Feast of
Fools seems still to linger among the Russian peasantry. “At one time
a custom prevailed of going about from one friend’s house to another
masked, and committing every conceivable prank. Then the people feasted
on blinnies,—a pancake similar to the English crumpet” (“A Hoosier
in Russia,” Perry S. Heath, New York, 1888, p. 109); all this at
Christmas-tide.
Something very much like it, without any obscene features, was noted by
Blunt in the early years of the present century. See his “Vestiges,” p.
119.
Hone (“Ancient Mysteries Described,” London, 1823, pp. 148 _et seq._)
thinks that a Jewish imitation of the Greek drama of the close of the
second century, whose plot, characters, etc., were taken from the Exodus,
was the first miracle play. The author was one Ezekiel, who was believed
to have written it with a patriotic purpose after the destruction of
Jerusalem. The early Fathers—Cyril, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, Clemens
Alexandrinus, and Augustine—inveighed against sacred dramas; but the
outside pressure was too great, and the Church was forced to yield to
popular demand.
As late as the fifteenth century Pius II. said that the Italian priests
had probably never read the New Testament; and Robert Stephens made the
same charge against the doctors of the Sorbonne in the same age.
The necessity of dramatic representation would therefore soon outweigh
objections made on the score of historical anachronism or doctrinal
inaccuracy in these miracle plays.
Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople in the tenth century, is
credited by the Byzantine historian Cedranus with the introduction of the
Feast of Fools and Feast of the Ass, “thereby scandalizing God and the
memory of his saints, by admitting into the sacred service diabolical
dances, exclamations of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the streets
and brothels.”—(Hone, quoting Wharton, “Miscellaneous Writings upon the
Drama and Fiction,” vol. ii. p. 369.)
In 1590, at Paris, the mendicant orders, led by the Bishop of Senlis,
paraded the streets with tucked up robes, representing the Church
Militant. These processions were believed to be the legitimate offspring
of heathen pageants,—that is, that of Saint Peter in Vinculis was
believed to be the transformed spectacle in honor of Augustus’s victory
at Actium, etc.
Beletus describes the Feast of Fools as he saw it in the twelfth century.
His account, given by Hone (p. 159), agrees word for word with that of
Dulaure, excepting that, through an error of translation perhaps, he is
made to say that the participants “ate rich puddings on the corners of
the altar;” but as the word “pudding” meant even in the English language
a meat pudding or sausage, the error is an immaterial one.
Victor Hugo describes in brief the Feast of Fools as seen at Paris in
1482, on the 6th of January. He says that the “Fête des Rois and the Fête
des Fous were united in a double holiday since time immemorial.” His
description is very meagre, but from it may be extracted the information
that in these feasts of fools female actresses appeared masked; that
the noblest and greatest personages in the kingdom of France were among
the prominent spectators; but there is not much else. (See the opening
chapters of “Notre Dame.”)
The Festival of Moharren in Persia is a kind of miracle play, or Passion
play, commemorating the rise and progress of Islamism. “Among these
occurrences are the deaths of Hassein and Hossein, the birth of the
prophet, the martyrdom of the Imam Rezah, and the death of Fatimeh,
daughter of Mahomet.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887.)
This reference to the use of pudding or sausage on the altar itself is
the most persistent feature in the descriptions of the whole ceremony.
But little difficulty will be experienced in showing that it was
originally an excrement sausage, prepared and offered up, perhaps eaten,
for a definite purpose. This phase of the subject will be considered
further on; for the present only one citation need be introduced to show
that in carnival time human excrement itself, and not the symbol, made
its appearance:—
“The following extract from Barnaby Googe’s translation of ‘Naogeorgus’
will show the extent of these festivities (that is, those of the carnival
at Shrove Tuesday). After describing the wanton behavior of men dressed
as women and of women arrayed in the garb of men, of clowns dressed as
devils, as animals, or running about perfectly naked, the account goes on
to say:—
“‘But others bear a torde, that on a cushion soft they lay;
And one there is that with a flap doth keep the flies away:
I would there might another be, an officer of those,
Whose room might serve to take away the scent from every nose.’”—
(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 66,
article “Shrove Tuesday.”)
The Puritan’s horror of heathenish rites and superstitious vestiges had
for its basis something far above unreasoning fanaticism; he realized,
if not through learned study, by an intuition which had all the force
of genius, that every unmeaning practice, every rustic observance,
which could not prove its title clear to a noble genealogy was a pagan
survival, which conscience required him to tear up and destroy, root and
branch.
The Puritan may have made himself very much of a burden and a nuisance
to his neighbors before his self-imposed task was completed, yet it is
worthy of remark and of praise that his mission was a most effectual
one in wiping from the face of the earth innumerable vestiges of
pre-Christian idolatry.
This being understood, some importance attaches to the following
otherwise vague couplet from “Hudibras.”
“Butler mentions the black pudding in his ‘Hudibras,’ speaking of the
religious scruples of some of the fanatics of his time:—
“‘Some for abolishing black pudding,
And eating nothing with the blood in.’”—
(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 400, article
“Martinmas.”)
These sausages, made in links, certainly suggest the _boudins_ of the
Feast of Fools. They were made from the flesh, blood, and entrails of
pork killed by several families in common on the 17th day of December,
known as “Sow Day.”
In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, in the May games, the
Pope was “portrayed in his pontificalibus riding on a great sow, and
holding before her taster a dirty pudding.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)
The most sensible explanation of the Feast of Fools that has as yet
appeared is to be found in Frazer’s “Golden Bough” (London, 1890, vol. i.
pp. 218 _et seq._, article “Temporary Kings”). He shows that the regal
power was not in ancient times a life tenure, but was either revoked
under the direction of the priestly body when the incumbent began to
show signs of increasing age and diminishing mental powers, or at the
expiration of a fixed period,—generally about twelve years. In the lapse
of time the king’s abdication became an empty form, and his renunciation
of powers purely farcical, his temporary successor a clown who amused the
fickle populace during his ephemeral assumption of honors. Examples are
drawn from Babylonia, Cambodia, Siam, Egypt, India, etc., the odd feature
being that these festivals occur at dates ranging from our February to
April. During the festival in Siam, in the month of April, “the dancing
Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large
copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring
good luck.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Fraser, M.A., London, 1890,
vol. i. p. 230.)
In the preceding paragraph we have a distinct survival. The buffalo horns
may represent phalli, and the water may be a substitute for a liquid
which to the present generation might be more objectionable.
But upon another matter stress should be laid; in both the Feast of Fools
and in the Urine Dance of the Zuñis, it has been shown that some of the
actors were naked or disguised as women.
No attempt is made to prove anything in regard to the European orgy,
because research has thrown no light upon the reasons for which the
participants assumed the raiment of the opposite sex.
In the case of the Zuñis, the author has had, from the first, a
suspicion, which he took occasion to communicate to Professor F. W.
Putnam three years since, that these individuals were of the class called
by Father Lafitau “hommes habillés en femme,” and referred to with such
frequency by the earliest French and Spanish authorities. This suspicion
has been strengthened by correspondence lately received from Professor
Bandelier which is, however, suppressed at the request of the latter.
In this connection, the student should not fail to read the remarkable
contribution of A. B. Holder, M. D., of Memphis, Tennessee, in the New
York Medical Journal of Dec. 7, 1889, entitled “The Boté: description of
a peculiar sexual perversion found among the North American Indians.”
An explanation of the “hommes habillés en femme,” may be suggested in
the following from Boas, descriptive of certain religious dances of the
Eskimo: “Those who were born in abnormal presentations, wear women’s
dresses at this feast, and must make their round in a direction opposite
to the movement of the sun.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in Sixth
Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 611.)
IV.
THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS.
The opinion expressed above concerning the commemorative character
of religious festivals echoes that which Godfrey Higgins enunciated
several generations ago. The learned author of “Anacalypsis” says that
festivals “accompanied with dancing and music” ... “were established to
keep in recollection victories or other important events.” (Higgins’
“Anacalypsis,” London, 1810, vol. ii. p. 424.) He argues the subject at
some length on pages 424-426, but the above is sufficient for the present
purpose.
“In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest
of their habits and customs.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 15.)
Applying the above remark to the Zuñi dance, it may be interpreted as a
dramatic pictograph of some half-forgotten episode in tribal history. To
strengthen this view by example, let us recall the fact that the army
of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit was so closely beleaguered by the
Moslems in Nicomedia in Bithynia that they were compelled to drink their
own urine. We read the narrative set out in cold type. The Zuñis would
have transmitted a record of the event by a dramatic representation which
time would incrust with all the veneration that religion could impart.
The authority for the above statement in regard to the Crusaders is to
be found in Purchas, “Pilgrims,” lib. 8, cap. 1, p. 1191. Neither Gibbon
nor Michaud expresses this fact so clearly, but each speaks of the
terrible sufferings which decimated the undisciplined hordes of Walter
the Penniless and Peter, and reduced the survivors to cannibalism.
The urine of horses was drunk by the people of Crotta while besieged by
Metellus.—(See, in Montaigne’s Essays, “On Horses,” cap. xlviii.; see
also, in Harington, “Ajax”—“Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 42.)
Shipwrecked English seamen drank human urine for want of water. (See in
Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1188.) In the year 1877 Captain Nicholas Nolan,
Tenth Cavalry, while scouting with his troop after hostile Indians on
the Staked Plains of Texas, was lost; and as supplies became exhausted,
the command was reduced to living for several days on the blood of
their horses and their own urine, water not being discovered in that
vicinity.—(See Hammersley’s Record of Living Officers of the United
States Army.)
History is replete with examples of the same general character; witness
the sieges of Jerusalem, Numantia, Ghent, the famine in France under
Louis XIV., and many others.
THE GENERALLY SACRED CHARACTER OF DANCING.
“Dancing was originally merely religious, intended to assist the memory
in retaining the sacred learning which originated previous to the
invention of letters. Indeed, I believe that there were no parts of
the rites and ceremonies of antiquity which were not adopted with a
view to keep in recollection the ancient learning before letters were
known.”—(Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” vol. ii. p. 179.)
In one of the sieges of Samaria, it is recorded that “The fourth part of
a cab of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver.”—(2 Kings, vi. 25.)
There is another interpretation of the meaning of this expression, not so
literal, which it is well to insert at this point.
“When Samaria was besieged, the town was a prey to all the horrors of
famine; hunger was so extreme that five pieces of silver was the price
given for a small measure (fourth part of a cab) of dove’s dung. This
seems, at first sight, ridiculous. But Bochart maintains very plausibly
that this name was then and is now given by the Arabs to a species of
vetch (_pois chiches_).”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Eusebe Salverte, New
York, 1862, vol. i. p. 70.)
“The pulse called garbansos is believed by certain authors to be the
dove’s dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria; ... they have likewise
been taken for the pigeons’ dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria. And,
indeed, as the cicer is pointed at one end and acquires an ash color
in parching, the first of which circumstances answers to the figure,
the other to the usual color of pigeons’ dung, the supposition is by no
means to be disregarded.”—(“Shaw’s Travels in Barbary,” in “Pinkerton’s
Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. xv. p. 600.)
FRAY DIEGO DURAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE MEXICAN FESTIVALS.
All that Higgins believed was believed and asserted by the Dominican
missionary Diego Duran. Duran complains bitterly that the unwise
destruction of the ancient Mexican pictographs and all that explained the
religion of the natives left the missionaries in ignorance as to what was
religion and what was not. The Indians, taking advantage of this, mocked
and ridiculed the dogmas and ceremonies of the new creed in the very face
of its expounders, who still lacked a complete mastery of the language
of the conquered. The Indians never could be induced to admit that they
still adhered to their old superstitions, or that they were boldly
indulging in their religious observances; many times, says the shrewd
old chronicler, it would appear that they were merely indulging in some
pleasant pastime, while they were really engaged in idolatry; or that
they were playing games, when truly they were casting lots for future
events before the priest’s eyes; or that they were subjecting themselves
to penitential discipline, when they were sacrificing to their gods. This
remark applied to all that they did. In dances, in baths, in markets, in
singing their songs, in their dramas (the word is “_comedia_,” a comedy,
but a note in the margin of the manuscript says that probably this ought
to be “_comida_,” food, or dinner, or feast), in sowing, in reaping,
in putting away the harvest in their granaries, even in tilling the
ground, in building their houses, in their funerals, in their burials,
in marriages, in the birth of children, into everything they did entered
idolatry and superstition.
“Parece muchas veces pensar que estan haciendo placer y estan
idolatrando; y pensar que estan jugando y estan echando suertes de los
sucesos delante de nuestros ojos y no los entendemos y pensamos que se
disciplinan y estanse sacrificando.
“Y asi erraron mucho los que con bueno celo (pero no con mucha
prudencia), quemaron y destruyeron al principio todas las pinturas de
antiguallas que tenian; pues, nos dejaron tan sin luz que delante de
nuestros ojos idolatran y no los entendemos.
“En los mitotes, en los baños, en los mercados, y en los cantares que
cantan lamentando sus Dioses y sus Señores Antiguos, en las comedias,
en los banquetes, y en el diferenciar en el de ellas, en todo se halla
supersticion é idolátria; en el sembrar, en el coger, en el encerrar en
los troges, hasta en el labrar la tierra y edificar las casas; pues en
los mortuorios y entierros, y en los casamientos y en los nacimientos de
los niños, especialmente si era hijo de algun Señor; eran estrañas las
ceremonias que se le hacian; y donde todo se perfeccionaba era en la
celebration de las fiestas; finalmente, en todo mezclaban supersticion é
idolatria; hasta en irse á bañarse al rio los viejos, puesto escrúpulo á
la republica sino fuese habiendo precedido tales y tales ceremonias; todo
lo cual nos es encubierto por el gran secreto que tienen.”—(Diego Duran,
lib. 2, concluding remarks.)
Fray Diego Duran, a Fray Predicador of the Dominican order, says, at the
end of his second volume, that it was finished in 1581.
The very same views were held by Father Geronimo Boscána, a Franciscan,
who ministered for seventeen years to the Indians of California. Every
act of an Indian’s life was guided by religion.—(See “Chinigchinich,”
included in A. A. Robinson’s “California,” New York, 1850.)
The Apaches have dances in which the prehistoric condition of the
tribe is thus represented; so have the Mojaves and the Zuñis; while in
the snake dance of the Moquis and the sun dance of the Sioux the same
faithful adherence to traditional costume and manners is apparent.
THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUÑIS MAY CONSERVE A TRADITION OF THE TIME WHEN
VILE ALIMENT WAS IN USE.