274 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



receive pardon like Adam crops up again in the See- 

 brucker Hirtenspiel (R, p. 134), and is peculiarly 

 suggestive of the nature of the mediaeval conception of 

 penance. As a third example, which may be compared 

 with the Marienklage and Lucifer's appeal, we may 

 refer the reader to the extremely fine lamentation of the 

 Foolish Virgins, written in the metre of the Nibelungen- 

 lied, with which the Ludus de decem Virginibus 

 concludes (0, pp. 30, 3 1). 1 



Yet although powerful, almost dramatic, passages 

 are not wanting in the greater passion-plays of the 

 fifteenth century, it is still true that their general tone 

 exhibits a naive folk-spirit, expressed in a strong but 

 crude folk-language. Only occasionally can we trace 

 instances of the ecclesiastical spirit and the old church 

 language, reminiscences of a time when the people had 

 made neither the plays, nor the Christian religion, their 

 own, but both were still in the first place associated with 

 Church ritual. In the lesser plays, especially in local 

 plays from out-of-the-way districts, where the peasants 

 were actors, and where there was no authority with the 

 will or the strength to repress extravagance, we find 

 the comic element predominant. This is peculiarly the 

 case in the short Easter and Christmas plays which, 

 even as early as the fifteenth century, had lost all 

 pretence of religious earnestness, and were related to 

 the greater passion-plays much as a Gaiety burlesque 



1 According to the tradition it^was a representation of this play which led 

 the Landgraf of Thiiringen so to despair of the mercy of God that he fell down 

 in a fit of apoplexy, from the results of which he died. The tradition at any rate 

 is of value as illustrating how deeply the religious plays could move the mediaeval 

 mind. 



