WOMAN AS WITCH 19 



ding parties at the church doors, so that the game is 

 peculiarly associated with high festivals and marriage 

 feasts. We may note, too, the decoration of the 

 churches in Hesse on May Day, and the solemn pro- 

 cession with the Maypole round the church. Eemark- 

 able in the same respect is the " playing of the stag," 

 to which reference occurs in a number of penitential 

 books and homilies. Men on New Year's Day clothed 

 themselves in the skin of a stag, with its horns upon 

 their heads, and were accompanied by other men 

 dressed in woman's clothing. In this costume, with 

 licentious songs and drinking, they proceeded to the 

 doors of the churches, where they danced and sung 

 with extraordinary antics. Tacitus, in his Germania, 

 tells us of a priest clothed as a woman, and when men 

 first usurped the office of priestess, there is little doubt 

 that they clothed as women. Hence the men dressed as 

 women who occur in so many Twelfth Day, May Day, 

 and Midsummer Day celebrations, are, I think, fossils of 

 the old priestesses, often occurring with fossils of the old 

 sacrificial animal. The "playing of the stag" at the 

 church doors seems to me, therefore, another relic of 

 the old religious rites accompanied by choral dance and 

 licentious song. 



Closely allied to these heathen ceremonies outside 

 the Christian churches is the German peasant Kirch- 

 weih or Kirmes, a festival supposed to be held in 

 memory of the dedication of a church. But the whole 

 festival is heathen in character. The Kirmes often 

 lasts or lasted three to four days. Its chief feature was 

 the dancing under the linden tree, or round a special 



