(M189) The Beautiful _Perchten_ in Salzburg are attired very differently from the Ugly _Perchten_, but their costume varies with the district. Thus in the Pongau district the distinctive feature of their costume is a tall and heavy framework covered with bright red cloth and decorated with a profusion of silver jewelry and filagree work. This framework is sometimes nine or ten feet high and forty or fifty pounds in weight. The performer carries it above his head by means of iron supports resting on his shoulders or his back. To run or jump under the weight of such an encumbrance is impossible; the dancer has to content himself with turning round and round slowly and clumsily. Very different is the headdress of the Beautiful _Perchten_ in the Pinzgau district of Salzburg. There the performers are dressed in scarlet and wear straw hats, from which bunches of white feathers, arranged like fans, nod and flutter in the wind. Red shoes and white stockings complete their attire. Thus lightly equipped they hop and jump and stamp briskly in the dance. Unlike their Ugly namesakes, who seem now to be extinct, the Beautiful _Perchten_ still parade from time to time among the peasantry of the Salzburg highlands; but the intervals between their appearances are irregular, varying from four to seven years or more. Unlike the Ugly _Perchten_, they wear no masks and appear in full daylight, always on Perchta’s Day (Twelfth Night, the sixth of January) and the two following Sundays. They are attended by a train of followers who make a great din with bells, whips, pipes, horns, rattles, and chains. Amongst them one or two clowns, clothed in white and wearing tall pointed hats of white felt with many jingling bells attached to them, play a conspicuous part. They carry each a sausage-shaped roll stuffed with tow, and with this instrument they strike lightly such women and girls among the spectators as they desire particularly to favour. Another attendant carries the effigy of a baby in swaddling bands, made of linen rags, and fastened to a string; this effigy he throws at women and girls and then pulls back again, but he does this only to women and girls whom he respects and to whom he wishes well. At St. Johann the _Perchten_ carry drawn swords; each is attended by a lad dressed as a woman; and they are followed by men clad in black sheepskins, wearing the masks of devils, and holding chains in their hands.(585)