THE PAGEANTS

183

Many Ldufer have broken away from the main body and are
surrounding the Holle, shooting at the menacing demons. A few
have placed ladders against the ship and are climbing up to board
it; another ladder is being carried up on the shoulders of a
Ldufer.268 Among the crowd are four Wild Men,269 pictured as in
the miniature of the grotesque, taller than the Ldufer and armed
with long heavy clubs; only one, however, has the little dwarf
tied to the tree-trunk. The fools are here, too, six in number, in
gayly-colored costumes and eared hoods: near the ship a fool in
red, yellow, and blue is attacking a demon with a staff; another,
in the same colors, is on his knees gathering stones; a third, in
a white costume with a red pattern, is intent on shooting off a
Sckembart fireworks; a fourth, in red and white stripes, is turning
a somersault; another fool, wearing diagonal stripes of the same
colors, is gesturing menacingly as he walks toward the Holle; the
sixth fool, in a costume striped black and white, is kneeling and
pointing his club as if to shoot. The brilliance of the scene is
heightened in the miniature by considerable gilding on the Ldufer
and the demons, and on the ship's portholes, cannons, and waves.
For the spectators observing the carnival from the Ratkaus it was
a brilliant entertainment: clowning and mumming, fireworks and
combat, the satiric burlesque of the enemy of the carnival, and
finally, the consummating blaze of the Holle as the Ldufer cleared
the pageant-ship of the demons infesting it and set it afire.
268 Cf. note 242.
269 Here, too, the miniature does not correspond to the text, for on f. Ilr are listed
thirty-one names of maskers costumed in "Holtz Klaidtern."