152

THE PAGEANTS

For the "Kinderfresser" Grimm suggested a classical forbear in
the manducus referred to in Plautus' Rudens (I, 535), a wild man
who gnashed' his teeth and terrified spectators at the shows.108
Nicoll109 points out that the stock type Dossenus (the 'hump-
backed' one) was known as Manducus (the "eater") in Roman
Atellan farce,110 and that he corresponded to the manducus men-
tioned by Plautus. Another classic figure perhaps related to the
idea of a "Kinderfresser" is Saturn (Cronos), who swallowed his
children to prevent their murdering him; a woodcut by Sebald
Beham in 1531 shows "Saturnus," a patriarch like our "Kinder-
fresser," seated in a chariot driven by dragons, with one child be-
fore him and another in his mouth.111 We cannot tell whether the
tradition of these fierce "eaters" was of influence on the creation of
the effigy of a "Kinderfresser" on our Holle. That the theme was
known in the Sixteenth Century is attested by a woodcut by Hans
Weiditz of a bearded ogre very similar to our giant, eating children
which he takes from a sack,112 and by a most famous monument,
the figure on the Kindlijresser fountain in Berne, erected between
1540 and 1550 on the Kornhausplatz.113 Sixteenth-century Switz-
erland yields another representation of the motif, in the "Kindli-
frasser" described and illustrated in an almanach for the year
1564.™ From these examples it may be concluded that the child
in the mouth of the "Fresser," and the reserve supply of children
in his pockets, or in a bag, had become conventional elements of
the figure.115 A more enlightened age has filled the bags of the

108 Grimm, Wb., V, 736.

109 Nicoll (Masks), p. 70.

"° Ibid., Figs. 66-9.

Cf. Geisberg (Holzschnitt), No. 990.

112 Ibid., No. 1520 ("Kinderschreck, urn 1520").

113 Cf. M. D. Hottinger, The Stories of Basel, Berne and Zurich (London: J. M.
Dent, 1933), p. 214. An excellent photograph is given in Buschan, op. cit., Tafel VI.
This ogre of Berne also has a naked child in his mouth, and others in bags and straps
at his side.

™ Cf. E. Weller, "Alte Schweizer Kalender," Anzeiger fur Kunde der deutschen
Vorzeit, Neue Folge, VI, No. 9, 1859. In the doggerel quoted here, the "Kind-
lifrasser" announces his intention of swallowing up all bad children, "even though he
might choke on one." An illustration shows the bogy among the children, who are
attacking him with bows and ropes; but he has already caught several, and stuck
them in his pocket, and one is just going down his gullet into his big stomach.

115 The same design appears in an eighteenth-century illustration, "Der Kinder-