Part 10 (1/2)
_Photo_] [_Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co., Munich_.]
109
The choir and people took their part in the singing; and dancing, to the old Germans a natural accompaniment of festive song, became common around the cradle, which in time the people were allowed to rock with their own hands.{47} ”In dulci jubilo” has the character of a dance, and the same is true of another delightful old carol, ”La.s.st uns das Kindlein wiegen,” still used, in a form modified by later editors, in the churches of the Rhineland. The present writer has heard it sung, very slowly, in unison, by vast congregations, and very beautiful is its mingling of solemnity, festive joy, and tender sentiment:--
[Ill.u.s.tration: Music]
”La.s.st uns das Kindlein wiegen, Das Herz zum Krippelein biegen!
La.s.st uns den Geist erfreuen, Das Kindlein benedeien: O Jesulein suss! O Jesulein suss!
La.s.st uns sein Handel und Fusse, Sein feuriges Herzlein grussen!
Und ihn demutiglich eren Als unsern Gott und Herren!
O Jesulein suss! O Jesulein suss!”[38]{48}
Two Latin hymns, ”Resonet in laudibus” and ”Quem pastores laudavere,”{49} were also sung at the _Kindelwiegen_, and
110
a charming and quite untranslatable German lullaby has come down to us:--
”Sausa ninne, gottes minne, Nu sweig und ru!
Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun, Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht, Tuste das, so wiss wir, da.s.s uns wol geschicht.”{50}
It was by appeals like this _Kindelwiegen_ to the natural, homely instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the ma.s.ses, making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille, the best historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting pa.s.sage on the subject: ”In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle,” he writes, ”the religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost character be opposed to the nature of the German people and their essential healthiness, was felt no longer as something alien. It had become naturalized, but had lost in the process its very core. The preparation for a life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had pa.s.sed into the background. It was not joy at the promised 'Redemption'
that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the German has never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful: it was joy at the simple fact that a human being, a particular human being in peculiar circ.u.mstances, was born into the world.... The Middle Ages showed in the cradle-rocking 'a true German and most lovable childlikeness.' The Christ Child was the 'universal little brother of all children of earth,' and they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and rocked Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him _in dulci jubilo_.”{51} There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ Child in other countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille underestimates the religious feeling that is often joined to the human sentiment.
The fifteenth century was the great period for the _Kindelwiegen_, the time when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem
111
irreverent to the stricter members of the clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in many places no longer rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the altar.{52} This usage is described by Naogeorgus (1553):--
”A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set, About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly jet, And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them heare, The organs aunswere every verse with sweete and solemne cheare.
The priestes do rore aloude; and round about the parentes stande To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them and their hande.”{53}
The placing of a ”Holy Child” above the altar at Christmas is still customary in many Roman Catholic churches.
Protestantism opposed the _Kindelwiegen_, on the grounds both of superst.i.tion and of the disorderly proceedings that accompanied it, but it was long before it was utterly extinguished even in the Lutheran churches. In Catholic churches the custom did not altogether die out, though the unseemly behaviour which often attended it--and the growth of a pseudo-cla.s.sical taste--caused its abolition in most places.{54}
At Tubingen as late as 1830 at midnight on Christmas Eve an image of the Christ Child was rocked on the tower of the chief church in a small cradle surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the ”rocking” is still continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: ”Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys are often very ill-behaved.”{57}
There are records of other curious ceremonies in German or Austrian churches. At St. Peter am Windberge in Muhlkreis in Upper Austria, during the service on Christmas night a life-sized wooden figure of the Holy Child was offered in
112
a basket to the congregation; each person reverently kissed it and pa.s.sed it on to his neighbour. This was done as late as 1883.{58} At Crimmitschau in Saxony a boy, dressed as an angel, used to be let down from the roof singing Luther's ”Vom Himmel hoch,” and the custom was only given up when the breaking of the rope which supported the singer had caused a serious accident.{59}
It is in Italy, probably, that the cult of the Christ Child is most ardently practised to-day. No people have a greater love of children than the Italians, none more of that dramatic instinct which such a form of wors.h.i.+p demands. ”Easter,” says Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, ”is the great popular feast in the eastern Church, Christmas in the Latin--especially in Italy. One is the feast of the next world, and the other of this. Italians are fond of this world.”{60} Christmas is for the poorer Italians a summing up of human birthdays, an occasion for pouring out on the _Bambino_ parental and fraternal affection as well as religious wors.h.i.+p.
In Rome, Christmas used to be heralded by the arrival, ten days before the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or _pifferari_ with their sylvan pipes (_zampogne_), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less harsh in sound. These minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome, playing their wild plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna, under the traditional notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often they would stop at a carpenter's shop ”per politezza al messer San Giuseppe.”{61} Since 1870 the _pifferari_ have become rare in Rome, but some were seen there by an English lady quite recently. At Naples, too, there are _zampognari_ before Christmas, though far fewer than there used to be; for one _lira_ they will pipe their rustic melodies before any householder's street Madonna through a whole _novena_.{62}
[Ill.u.s.tration:
CALABRIAN SHEPHERDS PLAYING IN ROME AT CHRISTMAS.
_After an Etching by D. Allan._
From Hone's ”Every-day Book” (London, 1826).]
In Sicily, too, men come down from the mountains nine days before Christmas to sing a _novena_ to a plaintive melody accompanied by 'cello and violin. ”All day long,” writes Signora Caico about Montedoro in Caltanissetta, ”the melancholy dirge
113