Carnival A-Z: Mistick Krewe

The most essential of all my Carnival A-Z posts recently disappeared from the site. This is the being reposted merely to fill the void that was accidentally created.

Mardi Gras has had a long tradition in New Orleans. The first time Mardi Gras was celebrated in Louisiana along the Mississippi River was in 1699, before the City of New Orleans was founded (or the City of Mobile for that matter). Louisiana may have the first North American Mardi Gras, but Mobile can claim the first Carnival Organization; it had the Boef Gras Society in 1711. Some young men from Mobile also formed a organization for "parading" for New Years. These gentlemen paraded through the streets with cowbells and rakes in a tradition from Europe and the mummers of Pennsylvania; thus, they called themselves the Cowbellion De Rakin Society (founded in 1830).

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Carnival in New Orleans was celebrated (almost entirely by the Creoles) by masking in the streets, private balls in the evenings, and children throwing flour at passers by. By the midpoint of the nineteenth century, though, it had degraded from what it once was. Many of the children were now throwing quicklime in lieu of flour; both are nearly identical white powdery substances, but quicklime reacts with the water to burn the skin of the poor passerby on which it lands. Many of the balls had become open to the public and were known for indecency, prostitution, and violence. Even the traditional masking had been made almost completely illegal because the guises were used to unidentifiably commit crimes. As the city’s government contemplated banning it altogether, the future of Mardi Gras in New Orleans looked bleak. 

Several of the members of the Cowbellion De Rakin Society (not Creoles, these were Americans, of of Anglo-Saxon lineage and Episcopalian faith), which had migrated to the Crescent City met secretly at Pope's Pharmacy; later the men gathered at a coffee house (read: gentleman’s bar) on Royal St. named The Gem. These men were highly educated in such things as classic literature, and it was to such classics that they looked for the icon that would grandly represent that last hurrah of sin before the fasting season of lent which (although not a part of the Episcopalian/Anglican heritage) was an integral part of the city. 

They reached a conclusion as to how they could bring Mardi Gras back from the treacherous track that seemed to be leading it straight to its grave: they were going to create a giant spectacle! A spectacle ruled by a god… a god of "festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances". How fitting a representation for this event would be the son and a cup-bearer of the god Bacchus, a god whose festivals had men and women exchanging clothes and whose representation was that of an inebriated young man ruling a kingdom of excess with not a scepter, but a cup. 

On Mardi Gras evening in 1857 a menagerie of masked men marched across what is today downtown New Orleans depicting the theme they had chosen for their evening: “Demon Actors from Milton’s Paradise Lost.” The procession contained two floats, one carrying Satan, the other carrying the groups chosen monarch and deity, Comus. The parade was lit by many flambeaux, rallied the onlookers into excitement, and ended at the location of its very elaborate, by-invitation-only ball. (Trying to sound archaic and mystical) they called themselves “The Mistick Kreweof Comus”. 

This group of young men set the format for many, many other groups in what they did on that evening. The decisions of this krewe are usually honored by the whole Carnival community, as the Mystick Krewe is given seniority over all others. When Comus spoke that they were to not parade due to war and sadness, no other krewe did either. 

This Krewe was one of the three forced out of parading by Dorothy Mae Taylor in 1992, and remains the only one whose floats have not touched the streets of the city since. They continue to revel in private though. Now each Mardi Gras evening is empty in a way it was not for 135 years. The streets are quieter and the lights are dimmer. Fret not though, not all is lost for those wanting to catch a glimpse of those joyful days past. I have heard it said that each year on the evening of the Mystick Krewe’s ball, one might be able to get a doubloon bearing the theme of that year’s ball by a group of men carrying rakes and cowbell, as they leave Antoine’s Restaurant. 

I will leave you all with the letter presented by Henri Schindler that year when Carnival evening became empty:

We cousins, God of the Sea, God of Laughter and Ridicule, the son of the Goddess Night and the Sorcerer, born of Bacchus and Circe, greet you this Shrovetide. By this proclamation we command the Krewe of Proteus, the Knights of Momus and the Mistick Krewe of Comus to stay this year their street pageants, and by it we exhort each of you to enjoy nevertheless a festive Carnival Season. 

Seven of your generations in this goodly Crescent City have known us only through our rides on avenue and street. So near to crossing with us into yet a third century, old as the oaks they travelled under, our parade cars wait now at rest and our flambeaux know neither fuel nor flame. Wooden wheels which rode the cobbles to the shouts of your great, great grandfathers might turn not again, and the torches which lit their laughing faces might nevermore reappear, but citizens, be certain, our societies will endure. 

So, let the celebration that we sired proceed apace. Go forward, New Orleanians, with carefree abandon and Carnival gladness unabated. Adieu, fair city, until the coming of some happy day when the Furies are done and the Fates call us to ride again to greet you

Proteus
Momus
Comus