ood deal of dancing, a violent death
and a revival, and grotesques found both in the dances and in the
Christmas plays.

The sword-dance thus passes by a gradual transition, the dancing
diminishing, the dramatic elements increasing, into the mummers' plays of
St. George. The central motive, death and revival, Mr. Chambers regards
as a symbol of the resurrection of the year or the spirit of
vegetation,[112] like the Thuringian custom of executing a "wild man"
covered with leaves, whom a doctor brings to life again by bleeding. This
piece of ritual has apparently been attracted to Christmas from an early
feast of spring, and Plough Monday, when the East Midland plays take
place, is just such an early spring feast. Again, in some places the
|301| St. George play is performed at Easter, a date alluded to in the
title, "Pace-eggers'" or "Pasque-eggers'" play.{13}

Two grotesque figures appear with varying degrees of clearness and with
various names in the dances and in the plays--the "fool" (Tommy) who
wears the skin and tail of a fox or other animal, and a man dressed in
woman's clothes (Bessy). In these we may recognize the skin-clad mummer
and the man aping a woman whom we meet in the old Kalends denunciations.
Sometimes the two are combined, while a hobby-horse also not unfrequently
appears.{14}

How exactly St. George came to be the central figure of the Christmas
plays is uncertain; possibly they may be a development of a dance in
which appeared the "Seven Champions," the English national heroes--of
whom Richard Johnson wrote a history in 1596--with St. George at their
head. It is more probable, however, that the saint came in from the
mediaeval pageants held on his day in many English towns.{15}

* * * * *

Can it be that the German St. Nicholas plays are more Christianized and
sophisticated forms of folk-dramas like in origin to those we have been
discussing? They certainly resemble the English plays in the manner in
which one actor calls in another by name; while the grotesque figures
introduced have some likeness to the "fool" of the morris.

Christmas mumming, it may be added, is found in eastern as well as
western Europe. In Greece, where ecclesiastical condemnations of such
things can be traced with remarkable clearness from early times to the
twelfth century, it takes sundry forms. "At Pharsala," writes Mr. J. C.
Lawson, "there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which the