The Mandans had an annual festival one of the features of which was “the expulsion of the devil.... He was chased from the village ... the women pelting him with dirt.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, London, 1890, vol. ii. p. 184, quoting Catlin’s “North American Indians,” page 166.)
The authors who have referred at greater or less length, and with more or less preciseness, to the Feast of Fools, Feast of Asses, and others of that kind, are legion; unfortunately, without an exception, they have contented themselves with a description of the obscene absurdities connected with these popular religious gatherings, without attempting an analysis of the underlying motives which prompted them, or even making an intelligent effort to trace their origin. Where the last has been alluded to at all, it has almost invariably been with the assertion that the Feast of Fools was a survival from the Roman Saturnalia.
This can scarcely have been the case; in the progress of this work it is purposed to make evident that the use of human and animal egestæ in religious ceremonial was common all over the world, antedating the Roman Saturnalia, or at least totally unconnected with it. The correct interpretation of the Feast of Fools would, therefore, seem to be that which recognized it as a reversion to a pre-Christian type of thought dating back to the earliest appearance of the Aryan race in Europe.
The introduction of the Christian religion was accompanied by many compromises; wherever it was opposed by too great odds, in point of numbers, it permitted the retention of practices repugnant to its own teachings; or, if the term “permitted” be an objectionable one to some ears, we may substitute the expression “acquiesced in” for “permitted,” and then follow down the course of persistent antagonism, which, after a while, modified permanent retention into a periodical, perhaps an irregular, resumption, and this last into burlesque survival.
Ducange, in his “Glossarium,” introduces the Ritual of the Mass at the Feast of the Ass, familiar to most readers,—but he adds nothing to what has already been quoted in regard to the Feast of Fools itself.
This reference from Ducange will also be found in Schaff-Herzog, “Religious Encyclopædia,” New York, 1882, article “Festival.” This Ritual was written out in 1369 at Viviers in France.