But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh shut against the peasant through the difference between his language and hers. By 1100 her services became quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at the church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the ox and the ass, &c. On these he makes Christmas carols, which grow ever more and more burlesque, forming a true Sabbatic literature. * * * * * Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings of the twelfth century had no influence on these mysteries, on this night-life of the _wolf_, the _game bird_, the _wild quarry_. The great sacraments of rebellion among the serfs, when they drank of each other’s blood, or ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,[53] may have been celebrated at the Sabbaths. The “Marseillaise” of that time, sung by night rather than day, was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:-- “Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont! Tout aussi grand cœur nous avons! Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!”[54] [53] At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my _Origines_. [54] “We are fashioned of one clay: Big as theirs our hearts are aye: We can bear as much as they.”--TRANS. But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated thereon the Pope and the King, with their enormous weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his old life by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances must by this time have waxed furious. Our negroes of the Antilles, after a dreadful day of heat and hard work, would go and dance away some four leagues off. So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there must have mingled a merriment born of revenge, satiric farces, burlesques and caricatures of the baron and the priest: a whole literature of the night indeed, that knew not one word of the literature of the day, that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux. * * * * * Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300. Before they could take the startling form of open warfare against the God of those days, much more was needed still, and especially these two things: not only a descending into the very depths of despair, but also _an utter losing of respect for anything_.