284 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



much to be said for it. The absence of all direct 



connection between the scenic rituals of the old and new 



religions does not demonstrate that the one was not the 



effective cause of the other. May not the early Christian 



missionaries, recognising the hold which religious festival 



and scenic display had upon the minds of the Germanic 



peoples, have found it impossible to push their own 



faith without dramatising its ritual ? They found it 



impossible to repress the love of spectacular festival ; 



nay, they found it forcibly invading their own places of 



religious gathering. Accordingly they endeavoured to 



attack heathenism by adopting attractions similar in 



spirit to its own. Thus the scenic ritual, and ultimately 



the religious plays, indirectly owe their origin to the 



very heathen ceremonies which their introduction was 



designed to repress. 1 Nor was the end proposed in the 



least achieved. A new formal expression can be given 



to the spirit of the people, but the essential features of 



that spirit will remain quite unchanged. We see this 



truth over and over again manifesting itself in the 



struggle between western heathenism and eastern 



Christianity. The Kirchweih was designed as a solemn 



Christian feast to replace old heathen festivals. And 



what happened to it ? The folk seized it as its own, 



made it the centre for all types of old folk-practices, till 



the modern Kirmes is one of the most fruitful sources of 



our knowledge of old heathen religious and social customs. 



Again the early Christian missionary could not root out 



the old district goddesses ; he endeavoured to replace 



1 The view here expressed is not, I think, identical with that of Gustav 

 Freytag in his De initiis scenicae poesis apud Germanos, 1838. 



