THE GROTESQUES

99

Man as he is pictured in early woodcuts." In our MS he carries
a strange burden over his shoulder: he has captured what appears
to be a young lad and tied him like some wild game to a sapling torn
up by the roots. The captive is stripped to the waist, his white
shirt hangs free, and a rope is slung about his bare arms and chest
and catches up his legs, which are encased in red long hose.12 Hans
Sachs describes this grotesque as a giant who has captured a
dwarf, and places him among a group masquerading as wood
spirits {Scheinpart-spruch, 11. 37-41):
Auch loffen etlich par
Holtz-mender vnnd holtz-frawen.
Darundter thet ich schawen
Riesen, die trugen gfangen
Zwerglein an eyBren stangen.
Our MS lists on f. Ilr the names of thirty-one guisers in "Holtz
Klaidtern" for 1539; in other MSS, also, references are made to
the Wild Man as "der Holtz-mendlein," or "der Holtzman."
The wild man of the woods was a familiar mask in Nuremberg
and not an invention of the Laufer. Several items in the fifteenth-
century police orders refer to mummings in the costume of the
Wild Man, and incidentally inform us of the collection of money
by the maskers, their mad shouts as they turned on the spectators
and gave free rein to their wild passions.13 The Wild Men appear-
11 Cf. Schramm, II. Abb. 680-1 (1477), 700; XIII, Abb. 262 (Wappenhalter,
1495); Scherer, Durer, op. cit., p. 406 (Zwei Wappenhalter, 1499?); Peter Brueghel's
"Le Combat d'Ourson et Valentin," cf. R. v. Bastelaer, Peter Bruegel (Bruxelles: G.
Van Oest, 1905); Jost Amman's "Die Holtzhausen" in his Wapen- und Stammbuch
(1583). A similar figure, a brown and hairy Wild Man, wearing green wreaths as
in our MS and with a tree-trunk at his side, is represented in a seventeenth-century
illustration of an English ballad, cf. Strutt, Pl. XXXII, "Pageantry," and p. 334,
n. h: "from a ballad entitled 'The mad merry Pranks of Robin Good Fellow'"
(n.d.); reproduced in Withington, I, opp. p. 74.
12 This miniature, with minor differences, occurs in nineteen of the MSS examined:
Nos. 4, 8 (dated 1421), 13, 14, 18 (dated 1521), 28 (here chased by a Lciufer and
a dog), 29, 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 51a, 52, 58, 60, 63. In MS No. 37 the Wild Man
is not hairy; in MS No. 51a the rime is as follows: In eins Holtzmans gestalt zier-
lich/ mit den Schempart, thet lauffen ich."
13 Cf. Baader, pp. 92-3: "So sol auch nyemands, weder dy wilden mendlein oder
andere die lewt um einich gelt inen ze geben anlauffen, schatzen oder notigen bey
der puB ij fund newer haller . . . Wir gebieten auch hiebey ernnstlich, das weder
die wilden mendlein noch ymands annders Christen oder Juden mit geschray wider
und fur nicht jagen oder nachlauffen sol, bey der pub etc. . . . Desgleichen sollen
auch die wilden menndlein oder ymandt annders den anndern nicht rauffen, werffen,