Closely corresponding to this urine dance of the Zuñis was the Feast of Fools in Continental Europe, the description of which here given is quoted from Dulaure:—
“La grand’messe commençait alors; tous les ecclésiastiques y assistaient, le visage barbouillé de noir, ou couvert d’un masque hideux ou ridicule. Pendant la célébration, les uns, vêtus en baladins ou en femmes, dansaient au milieu du chœur et y chantaient des chansons bouffones ou obscènes. Les autres venaient manger sur l’autel des saucisses et des boudins, jouer aux cartes ou aux dez, devant le prêtre célébrant, l’encensaient avec un encensoir, ou brûlaient de vieilles savates, et lui en faisaient respirer la fumée.
“Après la messe, nouveaux actes d’extravagance et d’impiété. Les prêtres, confondus avec les habitants des deux sexes, couraient, dansaient dans l’église, s’excitaient à toutes les folies, à toutes les actions licencieuses que leur inspirait une imagination effrénée. Plus de honte, plus de pudeur; aucune digue n’arrêtait le débordement de la folie et des passions....
“Au milieu du tumulte, des blasphêmes et des chants dissolus, on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits, d’autres se livrer aux actes du plus honteux libertinage.
“ ... Les acteurs, montés sur des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, s’amusaient à en jeter à la populace qui les entouraient.... Ces scènes étaient toujours accompagnées de chansons ordurières et impies.”—(Dulaure, “Des Divinités Génératrices,” chap. xv. p. 315 et seq., Paris, 1825.)
In the above description may be seen that the principal actors (taking possession of the church during high mass) had their faces daubed and painted, or masked in a harlequin manner; that they were dressed as clowns or as women; that they ate upon the altar itself sausages and blood-puddings. Now the word “blood-pudding” in French is boudin; but boudin also meant “excrement.”[5] Add to this the feature that these clowns, after leaving the church, took their stand in dung-carts (tombereaux), and threw ordure upon the by-standers; and finally that some of these actors appeared perfectly naked (“on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits”), and it must be admitted that there is certainly a wonderful concatenation of resemblances between these filthy and inexplicable rites on different sides of a great ocean.
Dulaure makes no attempt to trace the origin of these ceremonies in France; he contents himself with saying, “Ces cérémonies ... ont subsisté pendant douze ou quinze siècles,” or, in other words, that they were of Pagan origin. In twelve or fifteen hundred years the rite might have been well sublimed from the eating of pure excrement, as among the Zuñis, to the consumption of the boudin, the excrement symbol.[6] Conceding for the moment that this suspicion is correct, we have a proof of the antiquity of the urine dance among the Zuñis. So great is the resemblance between the Zuñi rite and that just described by Dulaure that we should have reason for believing that the new country borrowed from the old some of the features transmitted to the present day; and were there not evidence of a wider distribution of this observance, it might be assumed that the Catholic missionaries (who worked among the Zuñis from 1580, or thereabout, and excepting during intervals of revolt remained on duty in Zuñi down to the period of American occupation) found the obscene and disgusting orgy in full vigor, and realizing the danger, by unwise precipitancy, of destroying all hopes of winning over this people, shrewdly concluded to tacitly accept the religious abnormality and to engraft upon it the plant flourishing so bravely in the vicinity of their European homes.
In France the Feast of Fools disappeared only with the French Revolution; in other parts of Continental Europe it began to wane about the time of the Reformation. In England, “the abbot of unreason,” whose pranks are outlined by Sir Walter Scott in his novel “The Abbot,” the miracle plays which had once served a good purpose in teaching Scriptural lessons to an illiterate peasantry, and the “moralities” of the same general purport, faded away under the stern antagonism of the Puritan iconoclast. The Feast of Fools, as such, was abolished by Henry VIII. A.D. 1541.—(See “The English Reformation,” Francis Charles Massingberd, London, 1857, p. 125.)[7]
Picart’s account of the Feast of Fools is similar to that given by Dulaure. He says that it took place in the church, at Christmas tide, and was borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia; was never approved of by the Christian church as a body, but fought against from the earliest times:—
“Les uns étoient masqués ou avec des visages barbouillés qui faisoìent peur ou qui faisoìent rire; les autres en habits de femmes ou de pantomimes, tels que sont les ministres du théatre.
“Ils dansoient dans le chœur, en entrant, et chantoient des chansons obscènes. Les Diacres et les sou-diacres prenoient plaisir à manger des boudins et des saucisses sur l’autel, au nez du prêtre célébrant; ils jouoient à des jeux aux cartes et aux dés; ils mettoient dans l’encensoir quelques morceaux de vieilles savates pour lui faire respirer une mauvaise odeur.
“Après la messe, chacun couroit, sautoit et dansoit par l’église avec tant d’impudence, que quelques uns n’àvoient pas honte de se porter à toutes sortes d’indécences et de se dépouillier entièremênt; ensuite, ils se faisoìent trainer par les rues dans des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, d’ou ils prenoient plaisir d’en jeter à la populace qui s’assembloit autour d’eux.
“Ils s’arrétoient et faisoient de leurs corps des mouvements et des postures lascives qu’ils accompagnoient de paroles impudiques.
“Les plus impudiques d’entre les séculiers se mêloient parmi le clergé, pour faire aussi quelques personnages de Foux en habits ecclésiastiques de Moines et de Religieuses.”—(Picart, “Coûtumes et Cérémonies réligieuses de toutes les Nations du Monde,” Amsterdam, Holland, 1729, vol. ix. pp. 5, 6).
Diderot and d’Alembert use almost the same terms; the officiating clergy were clad “les uns comme des bouffons, les autres en habits de femmes ou masqués d’une façon monstrueuse ... ils mangeaient et jouaient aux dés sur l’autel à côté du prêtre qui célébroit la messe. Ils mettoient des ordures dans les encensoirs.” They say that the details would not bear repetition. This feast prevailed generally in Continental Europe from Christmas to Epiphany, and in England, especially in York.—(Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopædia, “Fête des Fous,” Geneva, Switzerland, 1779.)
Markham discovers a resemblance between the “Monk of Misrule” of Christendom in the Middle Ages, and “Gylongs dressed in parti-colored habits ... singing and dancing before the Teshu Lama in Thibet.”—(See Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, page 95, footnote. See also Bogle’s description of the ceremonies in connection with the New Year, in presence of the Teshu Lama, in Markham’s “Thibet,” p. 106.)
The Mandans had an annual festival one of the features of which was “the expulsion of the devil.... He was chased from the village ... the women pelting him with dirt.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, London, 1890, vol. ii. p. 184, quoting Catlin’s “North American Indians,” page 166.)
The authors who have referred at greater or less length, and with more or less preciseness, to the Feast of Fools, Feast of Asses, and others of that kind, are legion; unfortunately, without an exception, they have contented themselves with a description of the obscene absurdities connected with these popular religious gatherings, without attempting an analysis of the underlying motives which prompted them, or even making an intelligent effort to trace their origin. Where the last has been alluded to at all, it has almost invariably been with the assertion that the Feast of Fools was a survival from the Roman Saturnalia.
This can scarcely have been the case; in the progress of this work it is purposed to make evident that the use of human and animal egestæ in religious ceremonial was common all over the world, antedating the Roman Saturnalia, or at least totally unconnected with it. The correct interpretation of the Feast of Fools would, therefore, seem to be that which recognized it as a reversion to a pre-Christian type of thought dating back to the earliest appearance of the Aryan race in Europe.
The introduction of the Christian religion was accompanied by many compromises; wherever it was opposed by too great odds, in point of numbers, it permitted the retention of practices repugnant to its own teachings; or, if the term “permitted” be an objectionable one to some ears, we may substitute the expression “acquiesced in” for “permitted,” and then follow down the course of persistent antagonism, which, after a while, modified permanent retention into a periodical, perhaps an irregular, resumption, and this last into burlesque survival.
Ducange, in his “Glossarium,” introduces the Ritual of the Mass at the Feast of the Ass, familiar to most readers,—but he adds nothing to what has already been quoted in regard to the Feast of Fools itself.
This reference from Ducange will also be found in Schaff-Herzog, “Religious Encyclopædia,” New York, 1882, article “Festival.” This Ritual was written out in 1369 at Viviers in France.
Fosbroke gives no information on the subject of the Feast of Fools not already incorporated in this volume. He simply says: “In the Feast of Fools they put on masks, took the dress, etc., of women, danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes in the censer, jumped about the church, with the addition of obscene jests, songs, and unseemly attitudes. Another part of this indecorous buffoonery was shaving the precentor of fools upon a stage, erected before the church, in the presence of the people; and during the operation he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses and gestures. They also had carts full of ordure which they threw occasionally upon the populace. This exhibition was always in Christmas time or near it, but was not confined to a particular day.”—(Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. 2, article “Festivals.” Most of his information seems to be derived from Ducange.)
“The Feast of Fools was celebrated as before in various masquerades of Women, Lions, Players, etc. They danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes into the censer, ran, jumped, etc., through the church.”[8]
In Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1873, vol. 3, pp. 497-505, 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.”
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:—
(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:—
(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.)