Even before the time of Tacitus there were simple dramatic processions in Germany; on the great feast days of the German gods, there already appeared the humorous ideas of the pious German regarding his world of deities, associating with them comic processions of mummers, the figures of goblins and giants, gray winter and green spring, the bear of donar, and probably the magic white horse of Woden, which in the oldest form of dramatic play opposed each other either in mimic combat, or for their rights.
"Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II."
Gustav Freytag