"Sausa ninne, gottes minne,
Nu sweig und ru!
Wen du wilt, so wellen wir deinen willen tun,
Hochgelobter edler furst, nu schweig und wein auch nicht,
Tuste das, so wiss wir, dass uns wol geschicht."{50}

It was by appeals like this _Kindelwiegen_ to the natural, homely
instincts of the folk that the Church gained a real hold over the masses,
making Christianity during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries a genuinely popular religion in Germany. Dr. Alexander Tille,
the best historian of the German Christmas, has an interesting passage on
the subject: "In the dancing and jubilation around the cradle," he
writes, "the religion of the Cross, however much it might in its inmost
character be opposed to the nature of the German people and their
essential healthiness, was felt no longer as something alien. It had
become naturalized, but had lost in the process its very core. The
preparation for a life after death, which was its Alpha and Omega, had
passed into the background. It was not joy at the promised 'Redemption'
that expressed itself in the dance around the cradle; for the German has
never learnt to feel himself utterly vile and sinful: it was joy at the
simple fact that a human being, a particular human being in peculiar
circumstances, was born into the world.... The Middle Ages showed in the
cradle-rocking 'a true German and most lovable childlikeness.' The Christ
Child was the 'universal little brother of all children of earth,' and
they acted accordingly, they lulled Him to sleep, they fondled and rocked
Him, they danced before Him and leapt around Him _in dulci jubilo_."{51}
There is much here that is true of the cult of the Christ Child in other
countries than Germany, though perhaps Dr. Tille underestimates the
religious feeling that is often joined to the human sentiment.

The fifteenth century was the great period for the _Kindelwiegen_, the
time when it appears to have been practised in all the churches of
Germany; in the sixteenth it began to seem |111| irreverent to the
stricter members of the clergy, and the figure of the infant Jesus was in
many places no longer rocked in the cradle but enthroned on the
altar.{52} This usage is described by Naogeorgus (1553):--

"A woodden childe in clowtes is on the aultar set,
About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and trymly jet,
And Carrols sing in prayse of Christ, and, for to helpe them heare,
The org