CHARACTERISA T1ON IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 339 



one hand symbolising the highest bliss of heaven, and on 

 the other the fiendish delight of hell. Heaven as a 

 dancing-hall and hell with the characteristics of a mid- 

 night witch-gathering find a common origin in the old 

 choral religious festival to which I have referred in 

 earlier essays. 1 



In a play of the Day of Judgment published by 

 Mone, 2 we have a highly sensuous description of heaven 

 as a place of laughing, kissing, song, and music. In a 

 fourteenth-century Himmelfalirt Marici, Christ, after 

 addressing the Virgin in the language of the Song of 

 Songs, bids all the angels stand up and dance with her. 

 The archangel Michael offers his hand to the Mother of 

 God, and leads off down the heavenly green : 3 et sic 

 omnes chorizant, angeli cantant ad laudem dei. 



In a Weihnachtslied from Upper Bavaria, which is 

 probably a fragment of an old Three Kings play, we 

 have again reference to this Dance of Angels, for we 



read : 4 



D'Engai miiassent narisch sei~: 

 Sie toant so lustig umatanzen. 



Of greater interest for the history of culture than the 

 heavenly dancing is the hellish dancing. I have already 

 noted that the devils dance round Lucifer's tub in hell. 

 But the characteristic Dance of Devils is that which 

 leads to earth and back again in wild procession with 

 the souls of men. It is thus that the devils carry off 

 the foolish virgins in the Ludus de decem Virginibus. 5 

 We must thus imagine them in the plays of the Day of 



1 See Essays IX. and XL 2 B, vol. i. p. 287. 3 A, p. 87. 



4 R, No. 55, p. 75. 5 Bechstein, Wariburg Bibliothek, Bd. i. p. 25, 



