mummers
represent bride, bridegroom, and 'Arab'; the Arab tries to carry off the
bride, and the bridegroom defends her.... Formerly also at 'Kozane and in
many other parts of Greece,' according to a Greek writer in the early
part of the nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying
bells used to go round the houses, singing songs and having 'one or more
of their company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes' brushes and
other such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.'"{16}

|302| In Russia, too, mummers used to go about at Christmastide,
visiting houses, dancing, and performing all kinds of antics. "Prominent
parts were always played by human representatives of a goat and a bear.
Some of the party would be disguised as 'Lazaruses,' that is, as blind
beggars." A certain number of the mummers were generally supposed to play
the part of thieves anxious to break in.{17} Readers of Tolstoy's "War
and Peace" may remember a description of some such maskings in the year
1810.

THE FEAST OF FOOLS.

So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs practised
chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn to certain
festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which, though pagan in
origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found their way in the Middle Ages
within the walls of the church.

Shortly after Christmas a group of _tripudia_ or revels was held by the
various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and other churches.
These festivals, of which the best known are the Feast of Fools and the
Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so fully described by other writers, and
my space here is so limited, that I need but treat them in outline, and
for detail refer the reader to such admirable accounts as are to be found
in Chapters XIII., XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's "The Mediaeval
Stage."{18}

Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the end of the
twelfth century, speaks of four _tripudia_ held after Christmas:--those
of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests on St. John's, the
choir-boys on Holy Innocents', and the subdeacons on the Circumcision,
the Epiphany, or the Octave of the Epiphany. The feast of subdeacons,
says Belethus, "we call that of fools." It is this feast which, though
not apparently the earliest in origin of the four, was the most riotous
and disorderly, and shows most clearly its pagan character. Belethus'
mention of it is the f