ans aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne cheare.
The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes stande
To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their
hande."{53}

The placing of a "Holy Child" above the altar at Christmas is still
customary in many Roman Catholic churches.

Protestantism opposed the _Kindelwiegen_, on the grounds both of
superstition and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied it, but
it was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the Lutheran
churches. In Catholic churches the custom did not altogether die out,
though the unseemly behaviour which often attended it--and the growth of
a pseudo-classical taste--caused its abolition in most places.{54}

At Tuebingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve an image of the
Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the chief church in a small
cradle surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a
cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still
continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of
Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by
the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be
disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the
sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys
are often very ill-behaved."{57}

There are records of other curious ceremonies in German or Austrian
churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in Muehlkreis in Upper Austria, during
the service on Christmas night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy
Child was offered in |112| a basket to the congregation; each person
reverently kissed it and passed it on to his neighbour. This was done as
late as 1883.{58} At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an angel,
used to be let down from the roof singing Luther's "Vom Himmel hoch," and
the custom was only given up when the breaking of the rope which
supported the singer had caused a serious accident.{59}

* * * * *

It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is most
ardently practised to-day. No people have a greater love of children than
the Italians, none more of that dramatic instinct which such a form of
worship demands. "Easter," says Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, "is the
great popular feast in the eastern Church, Christmas in the
Latin--especially in Italy. One is the fe