two urban folk festivals

Two Urban Folk FestivalsAuthor(s): Violet AlfordSource: Folklore, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Dec., 1937), pp. 366-374Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1257535 .

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COLLECTANEA

TWO URBAN FOLK FESTIVALS

I

The Morgenstreich at Basel takes place at " Old Carnival," that is, the Sunday and Monday after Ash Wednesday. The Pro- testant Cantons of Switzerland celebrate Carnival a week too late according to the present calendar. This is partly to maintain their differences from the Roman Catholic Cantons, chiefly to show their superiority, in that the Reformed Church did not enjoin fasting in Lent. Already in 154o the Morgenstreich was celebrated on its present date.' One unforeseen result of this difference in date is to allow not very devout Catholics, and all Protestants, to enjoy two Carnivals by taking a short journey into another Canton. Special trains are run for excursionists to Basel on the evening before the Morgenstreich, both in Switzer- land itself and from Germany.

The processionists are respectable and well-to-do citizens, who pay a considerable entrance fee to the " Clique " to which they belong. These companies are called by fanciful names-Lalli Clique, Schnuderbeeri Clique and so forth, or after suburbs or quarters of the town. Each Clique gathers at its chosen inn during the night of Carnival Sunday, members wearing any disguise or fancy dress they choose on their bodies, but on their heads all wear large lanterns, circular, star-shaped or in other forms, each with two drum-like faces of transparent parchment. These faces are painted with local topical or political subjects, sometimes funny, often unbelievably vulgar. The fife and drum bands of each Clique are all masked alike as animals, frogs, or any absurd or frightful creatures.

By 3.30 a.m. on the Monday morning the streets are crowded with townsfolk, all out to hear the Morgenstreich, or Morning Drumming. Just before 4 o'clock the Cliques stream out of their inns and arrange themselves in processional order, first the

1 Schweizer Volksleben, Ed. H. Brockmann-Jerosch, Zurich, 1930-31. 366



Collectanea 367

drum-major, then the band, next an enormous " transparency " on a handcart, finally the rank and file, composed of several hundred men, sometimes accompanied by a few enthusiastic female members, all duly crowned with the lantern. The visitor must be up and ready, for as the great clocks of Basel boom out the hour, every light in the town goes out. Simultaneously lights inside the transparent cart and head-pieces blaze out, bands strike up, and the march begins. Such drumming is rarely heard. It is the pride and speciality of Basel, where drumming schools exist and where every boy must learn to drum. Indeed Cliques of quite small boys were on the march amongst the adults, and their drum rhythms were nearly as complicated, and and quite as exact, as those of their fathers and elder brothers. Every Clique must cross the Rhine, so those from Petit Basel stream upwards, those from the higher town stream down, to pass and repass on the bridges and in the streets. Drum-majors -bulky and terrifying figures, masked, stuffed and disguised almost out of human semblance-gravely salute each other, fifers shrilling and drummers syncopating for dear life, for it is an eternal disgrace for a Clique to be put out of step by a rival band. They all begin precisely as the clocks strike 4, it is true, but absolute synchronization is hardly possible to maintain, and bands are a bar or two apart by the time they reach outlying streets. There are many calls at inns, the whole assembly flooding in, to be met by another flooding out, but no drunken- ness is to be seen, for perfect drumming demands sobriety. The whole town is on the march, following their favourite Clique, commenting on the personalities and sarcasms of the transparencies. Many Germans come across the frontier to see the show, and at this last Carnival (1937) they were regaled with hundreds of caricatures of their Fiihrer, toothbrush moustache, falling lock and lackadaisical eye, enormously exaggerated in size, and pitilessly illuminated from within. That other seasoned joke which seems poor fun to our prosaic minds, the nacht-topf, rivalled the German Leader in its hundred appearances. One could not but be amazed at the whole thing; the thousands of absurdly masked figures performing such miracles of rhythm in the dead of night, the perfect order, the punctuality, and the



368 Collectanea

knowledge that beneath masks and transparencies marched the most worthy citizens of Basel. At 5 a.m. the town lights came on again. As the cold February dawn crept up the sky the processions broke up.

This morning drumming, or Aubade, is thought by the towns- people to be ancient, but in reality it began in 1835 only, and until 1912 took place on the Wednesday instead of the Monday morning.2 The Morgenstreich tunes (except for an interpolated set of British marches such as " Brighton Camp " and " The British Grenadiers ") are traditional from about the seventeenth century, and were once Land-knecht tunes for their fifes and drums. Originally these instruments were used for the call to arms, then were used by the town guilds, whose symbols, heraldic beasts and birds, marched with their companies. These guild marches attached themselves to Carnival, which has had a magnet-like action on winter and early spring customs, but in Petit Basel the old guild emblems still go out to dance in January, men representing a griffin, a lion, the wildemann and so on. In Switzerland the influence of the guilds on ancient folk- customs can be much more plainly descried than in England. At Zug this year (1937) the carpenters organized the Carnival " bread throwing " by the traditional Fools, who wore ancient hand-carved wooden masks.

As for the transparencies, they cannot claim a long tradition, although such painted lanterns appear to have had a place anciently in ecclesiastical processions, that of the FRte Dieu at Aix-en-Provence for instance, and are still much used in Spain. Here in Basel they took the place of torches when these were prohibited. Since 1870 they have been painted by professional artists,3 and thus a local art (of a queer sort) has developed. The same day at 2 p.m. out come the processions again. This time each Clique wears its new Carnival dress and mask, every- one alike. Each now has its scene arranged on a lorry, carrying on the same subject as that painted on the big transparency of the night, topical, local, difficult for a stranger to understand, very rarely Federal. In 1839 these scenic carts first appeared 4

2Schweizer Volksleben. 3 Ibid. - Ibid.



Collectanea 369

(or first took their present form, for Carnival carts have their origin in pagan spring processions). They later became scan- dalous and had to be brought to order by a judging committee, who also judge the transparencies and award prizes.

Basel has unfortunately lost many interesting Carnival cere- monies. The town boasted a Butchers' Dance, in which the lion's head, the emblem of their guild, was carried by the richest butcher. He was accompanied by a Bride and Bridegroom, Fools and other maskers, all wearing little bells, great cowbells, and carrying cows' tails. The Fools threw the Bride and Bride- groom into a fountain. Reference to this well-known spring magic was made in 1574 and again in 1728 and I774.5 In Bern, both it and the Butchers' Dance are mentioned as early as 1418. Both these Swiss towns also possessed a Coopers' Dance per- formed with bent hoops.6 Its description might almost be that of the better-known Schifflertanz of Munich, and here as there the Head men swung wine glasses in a hoop and were hoisted, the Fool keeping the dancing place and imitating the dancers' movements. Basel also possessed a Sword Dance, which may have been done by the Coopers, for we know that at Ulm boys danced with swords by day and with hoops at night. In 1566 two people (whether a bridal couple or no is not mentioned) were at some moment of the Sword Dance thrown into the Bairfusser- brunnen.7 Another Basel Carnival recreation in 1516 was to fight with sacks of ashes,8 a Carnival combat which continues to-day in the Lbtschenthal, and which I know in another form in the Pyrenees. Although the town has lost these more primitive amusements together with the ceremonial dances kept alive by the guilds, its present mode of drumming-in Carnival is an interesting example of city organization of a folk ebullition.

II The Fallas at Valencia. The explanatory legend believed in

the city of Valencia is the following. St. Joseph is the Patron of carpenters, and to do him honour these artisans had an annual

5 E. Hoffman-Krayer, Schweizerisches Archiv fur Volkskunde, Zurich, 1897.

6 Ibid. I Ibid. 8 Ibid. 2A



370 Collectanea

spring-cleaning on the Eve of their Saint's Day. They swept their wood shavings into the street, and set them alight, so that each carpenter's workshop had a bonfire at its door on the night of i8th March. Neighbours joined in the little fiesta, and by degrees whole streets took over the carpenters' fires. When the humble falla or faggot changed to the outrageous erection of

to-day nobody knows. The custom spreads beyond the city to

surrounding villages, and to towns such as Sagunto. In every plaza, at cross-streets, on the quays of the Turia,

everywhere where there is a little space, and if no space then in the narrow street itself, a platform is put up, small, medium or enormous according to district and funds. Every house in the street subscribes towards the expenses of Falla, fireworks and band for dancing. In the richer quarters very large sums are raised. On these platforms great erections are built up, houses, castles, mountains, lighthouses, whatever is suitable to the scene chosen to be represented. Then figures are added, life-size or more than life-size, dressed in real clothing or figure and clothing moulded together in papier mach6 or some composition. The under part of the platform is filled with broken-down furniture, straw, any sort of combustibles, and with fireworks. A door is made to open in the side. Generally the scenes chosen are, like those of the Morgenstreich, topical and local. Politics did not find favour in the Fallas of 1936. They were, one supposes, too dangerous a subject in that fateful pause between the last Spanish elections and the shattering of all politics save those of unrestrained force. The major part of the scenes that year were trivial, or so vulgar that they verged on the indecent. One colossal construction bore the title foyas del Teatro, but the jewels portrayed seemed to have come from the lowest type of music hall, and the side most exposed to the public made one flinch every time one passed it. However, in a retired spot round the corner, so to speak, I did descry the figure of Lope de Vega, modestly withdrawn, eyes on the ground, as well they might be. The most interesting, and by far the most successful, were the Fallas showing regional life. There were perhaps half a dozen of these amongst some seventy or eighty of the Yoyas type. One was a scene in the Huerta, the great orange garden



Collectanea 371

of Valencia, still kept fertile by the Moorish irrigation channels which intersect it in every direction. It showed a barraca, the charming type of cottage belonging to the Huerta, thatched and whitewashed, outside of which a group of Valencianos in local dress drank, sang, and played the guitar. One scene from regional history was really fine-a Valencian Caballero rescuing a girl from raiding Moors. She was dressed in a real costume of the country, lovely apron, lace fichu, and the small metal comb and side-pieces supposed to be descendants of the great ear- discs worn by the famous and equivocal Dama de Elche. He was mounted on an excellently designed white charger, and made a grand apex to the piled up d6cor. The children of course imitated their elders, like the small drummer-boys of the Mor- genstreich. Here they erected their little Fallas against the houses, or in the embrasures of a window, and as children are not vulgar-minded the results were more delightful than any in the city; tiny barracas like dolls' houses, orange gardens made of twigs from those trees, beaches covered with sand and shells, anything within the knowledge and capabilities of the makers.

At least three nights before St. Joseph's Day the street com- mittees of the Fallas, like the Cliques of the Morgenstreich, were on the march. Before finally arranging their scene they paraded a few of their most notable figures or objects. Discordant bands brayed through the night, meeting and passing each other, the proud employers of them following, their horrific figures borne aloft. Now and again the strident blare of the regional instru- ment, the donzaina, and the thrum of its attendant small drum, the tabalet, made an interesting though not less noisy interlude. These marches continued every night and all night-for like most Spaniards Valencianos seem to have an antipathy towards their beds. Meanwhile special trains were unloading thousands of excursionists from Madrid, Saragossa, Barcelona or Alicante, and long distance rapidos were bringing tourists from France and even from Italy. The crowds by day soon prevented free move- ment, and the increasing explosions of abnormally powerful squibs made life hideous. At midnight on St. Joseph's Eve a great concourse blocked the central plaza above the sunken



372 Collectanea

flower market, to listen, if they could, to a programme of re-

gional music by guitarists and donzaina players, and to see their own form of Jota danced by men and women in Valencian dress 9 -the loveliest in Spain. This was a delightful oasis in the welter of brass bands and marching Fallas, or would have been if rival

companies of squib-throwers had allowed us to listen. The morning of St. Joseph's Day was taken up in viewing the

competitive Falla figures, which, like the Basel transparencies and carts, had been judged by a committee. Here as in the Swiss

town, the demand has given rise to a specialized art, that of

designing and moulding the figures. At close quarters one could admire the beautiful dresses, and regret they were so soon to

go up in flames; but always excepting the few regional charac- ters depicted,10 there was nothing to regret about the figures themselves, except the taste which invented them. A bonfire, indeed, seemed the right place for them. That night the streets became impassable. Only by selecting a modest Falla which could be reached by retired ways could one hope to see the final blaze. Bands were playing at every street corner, couples dancing, not their own gay Jota but the gloomy and sliding international dances of to-day. As the clocks struck midnight a deep detonation made the crowds as one man gasp out a heartfelt

" Ahora! " and a roar of explosions answered. The Falla men all over the

city had opened the doors beneath their edifices, and had touched-off the fireworks within. The sky grew brighter every minute with rockets and stars, and soon glowed scarlet with the flare of the combustibles. Flames shot up, enveloped the care-

fully prepared scenes, lapped round the expensively dressed

figures, till the whole city seemed ablaze. The unimportant

9 For a discussion of Jota music and coplas see V. Alford, " The Valencian Cross-roads," The Musical Quarterly, xxiii, No. 3, July 1937, New York.

10 Some of these were to be salvaged from the fires, and were to go to the small Folk Museum just started in Valencia. One cannot but trust no harm has come to the collection already installed in an old exhibition building across the river.



Collectanea 373

little Falla we watched tottered, caved in and fell into its own burning fiery furnace. But the foreign onlookers and its attendant men were the only audience of its collapse. Long before this the tiny plaza had emptied, the crowd which had paid for the show had, with the sudden inconsequence of southerners, flocked away to gaze at the greater glory of the tottering Joyas.

This city fiesta in its beginnings probably had no more to do with St. Joseph than the Morgenstreich with Carnival. As the latter was drawn into the Carnival season from independent Lands- knecht marches, so the Fallas seem to me to belong to the spring and midsummer fire festivals. In southern Germany and Austria, early spring fires (often mistakenly called Carnival fires) are common, Easter fires are well known elsewhere; in Spain, however, but few of either. There fire rites cluster thickly round midsummer, on the Eves of St. John and St. Peter. But that is no reason to deny the practice in spring, especially where it has become fixed to a city tradition of a saint, as in Valencia. For corroboration, look a moment to the north of that province. In the Pyrenean foothills of Catalonia, and especially at Isil near the Aragonese border, young men called fallaires prepare in the communal forest enormous faggots of brushwood. On Midsummer Eve they climb up to where these are lying, set them alight, and bearing them all ablaze on their shoulders race down the mountain side, leaving showers of sparks which set fire to the grass and undergrowth until the whole slope seems flaming. At the bottom the girls of the Roser society (Our Lady of the Rosary) are awaiting to present flowers and refreshments to the fallaires first down." In the Catalan Val d'Aran on the north side of the Pyrenees men make torches of sticks to twirl round their heads while the St. John's fires are burning, and in Aridge in many districts, boys do the same, threading cherry bark into a stick, lighting these at the St. John's fire to twirl vertically round their heads, thus making a blazing wheel. These in langued'oc are called fajos.12 Valencian is a dialect of

11 Valeri Serra i Boldu, Llibre d'or del Rosari a Catalunya, Barcelona, 1925.

12 See Violet Alford, Pyrenean Festivals, Chatto and Windus, London. I937.



374 Collectanea

Catalan. Catalan is a form of the langued'oc, which in varying dialects and sub-dialects is spoken all along the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean to the Basque country. The Valencian 11 is as liquid as a y, and the langued'oc j as in fajo gives precisely the same sound in many regions. One may, then, assuredly see a link between both name and origin of these primitive faggot fires and the great city organization of the Valencian Fallas.

VIOLET ALFORD

BALLYVOURNEY AND ITS SHEELA-NA-GIG.

ON the road from Macroom to Killarney, where the grass-lands of the eastern part of the Lee valley have given place to the high moorlands that preface the wilder hills of Kerry, lies the village of Ballyvourney. Half a mile to the south stands a small ruined church, the remains of the ancient Abbey of Saint Gobonet.1 Above a window in its south wall is sculptured in low relief a torso, credited with the name of Saint Gobonet, but also accepted by Irish antiquarian writers as a Sheela-na-gig. The term " Sigla na gcioch," anglicised into " Sheela-na-gig," means, if we take Sheela as a proper name, " Sheela of the breasts," and is eminently applicable to the earliest figures found, though not to all examples known later.4 The earliest recorded mention of the figures which go under that name is found in 1840o 2 and 1844,3 and they seem, except for a possible two or three reported from Poictiers and Como, to be peculiar to the British Isles and Ireland. From the number found in Ireland, where more than sixty are recorded,4 and the fact that they were first noticed there, it at one time appeared that they originated in that country; but the discovery of an increasing number in

1 Spelt also Gobnata, Gobenata, Gobnait, Gobnet, Gobinet. 2 O'Donovan, in Ordnance Survey Letters (Typed Copy in National

Library, Dublin), Tipperary I, p. xiv, II, p. 152.

3 Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., ii, 1844, p. 575. 4 See descriptive List of Irish Sheela-na-gigs as known in 1935, with

illustrations and distribution map, Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. of Ireland, lxvi, Pt. I, 1936.



two urban folk festivals

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