round and collect money, is the proverbial bringer of gifts; he also carries a rod, identified by Mannhardt as the "Lebensrute."[1]
The two characteristics of Klaus noted above he shares with the "Hudler." In the Austrian custom known as "Hudlerlaufen" a man disguised in a mouse-mask pursued people with a whip; when he had caught them he treated them at the inn and then set out in search of others.[2] This custom I interpret as a survival of human sacrifice which had taken the place of a mouse-sacrifice. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that the "Hudler" wears a mouse-mask in a part of Europe where blind man's buff is known as "Blinde Maus."
We have seen that the "Hudler" gives food to those whom he catches; we find a corresponding feature in blind man's buff; in Germany, Sweden, and probably other parts of Europe reference is made in the game to eating meal and milk,[3] obviously the sacred food which, as in the (
Greek characters) at Athens,[4] the victim had to eat. To the whip or rod carried by Klaus and the Hudler corresponds the wand used in some forms of blind man's buff.[5] It has another parallel in the whip carried by the priest in the Indian village rites described by Mr. Gomme in his Ethnology in Folklore. The object was, perhaps, to make the victim move or shiver, a result usually attained by pouring water on it.[6]
The eating of meal and milk is also alluded to in the
- ↑ Baumkultus, passim. Klaus = Nicholas, and the French name for Blind Man's Buff seems to mean "Blinded Nicholas," which seems to confirm the explanation I give of the Klaus customs. In Lithuania, mummers beat people on Dec. 24 (Globus, xxii., 239). Cf. Whipping Tom at Shrovetide (Hone, Table-book, 269).
- ↑ Kloster, vii., 799; cf. Mannhardt, Bk., p. 268.
- ↑ Handelmann, loc. cit.
- ↑ Frazer, Golden Bough, ii., 38.
- ↑ Handelmann, p. 73, cf. p. 75; Pollux, loc. cit.
- ↑ Cf. Globus, xvii., 24, where we find striking as a means of transferring sins to a scapegoat.
