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THE DELIGHT MAKERS 27
mask, the most sacred vestment used in these ceremonies, is formed of a single piece of stretched fabric with black eyes, a black spot for a muzzle or a mouth and two horns. The effect of the juxtaposition of the eyes and muzzle bears a quite extraordinary resemblance to the mask of Charlie. Holiness springs from the mask, which is also reproduced in the sandpaintings. From it come, in a long, soft and unbroken stream, the tender recuperative forces of life, as the medicine men chant:
He stirs, he stirs, he stirs.
Among the lands of dawning, he stirs, he stirs,
The pollen of dawning, he stirs, he stirs.
As for the Navajo clowns who appear in force on the last night of the Night Chant in celebration of the returning flow of life, they are the rowdiest and most boisterous of all. Nothing is sacred to them. Their comic play is as indelicate as the comic play of the ancient Greeks. All the men have a large bladder shaped like a penis under their breechcloths, and with their breechcloths removed, with clumps of grass pulp on their buttocks and a short twig crosswise between their buttocks they jump and hobble to the shouts and laughter of the crowded house-tops. This may not be amusing to our taste; it is not intended to amuse the Navajo onlookers. They have created a glorious drunken indecent shape of a hobbling clown as part of their ritual, and they are after larger rewards than amusement. The ceremonies are performed through eight long nights of hushed and reverent chanting; on the ninth day the dark fermenting wine is uncorked, and half the wine gushes out in the explosion. The Balinese have similar revels; so did the Aztecs, from whom the Pueblos seem to have borrowed many of the forms of revelry. We forget that orgies of clowning were once considered a part of life, perhaps the most essential part, and we shall not understand the clowns until we realize they are gods.
In an age when real laughter is rare, we regard the koshare