f the neck of corn in water, sprinkling
holy drops upon persons or animals, processions of beasts or men in
beast-masks, dressing trees with flowers, and the like, but above all
ceremonial dances, often in disguise. The sword-dance, recorded by
Tacitus, of which an important feature was the symbolic threat of death
to a victim, endured (though it is rarely mentioned) to the later middle
ages. By this time it had attracted to itself a variety of additional
features, and of characters familiar as pace-eggers, mummers,
morris-dancers (probably of distinct origin), who continually enlarged
the scope of their performances, especially as regarded their comic
element. The dramatic "expulsion of death," or winter, by the
destruction of a lay-figure--common through western Europe about the 8th
century--seems connected with a more elaborate rite, in which a
disguised performer (who perhaps originally represented summer) was
slain and afterwards revived (the _Pfingstl_, Jack in the Green, or
Green Knight). This representation, after acquiring a comic complexion,
was annexed by the character dancers, who about the 15th century took to
adding still livelier incidents from songs treating of popular heroes,
such as St George and Robin Hood; which latter found a place in the
festivities of May Day with their central figure, the May Queen. The
earliest ceremonial observances of this sort were clearly connected with
pastoral and agricultural life; but the inhabitants of the towns also
came to have a share in them; and so, as will be seen later, did the
clergy. They were in particular responsible for the buffooneries of the
feast of fools (or asses), which enjoyed the greatest popularity in
France (though protests against it are on record from the 11th century
onwards to the 17th), but was well known from London to Constantinople.
This riotous New Year's celebration was probably derived from the
ancient Kalend feasts, which may have bequeathed to it both the
hobby-horse and the lord, or bishop, of misrule. In the 16th century the
feast of fools was combined with the elaborate festivities of courts and
cities during the twelve Christmas feast-days--the season when
throughout the previous two centuries the "mummers" especially
flourished, who in their disguisings and "_viseres_" began as dancers
gesticulating in dumb-show, but ultimately developed into actors proper.

The liturgy the main source of the medieval religious drama.

Trop