People would masquerade as a devilish figure known as , a two-legged humanoid goat with a giraffe-like neck, wearing animal furs. People wore costumes and marched in processions known as . The were looked at with suspicion by the Catholic Church and banned by some civil authorities. Due to sparse population and rugged environments within the Alpine region, the ban was not effective or easily enforced, rendering the ban useless. In the state of
Styria, Southeastern Austria, all of the were played by women right into the 19th century. As a part of this, they blackened their faces, wore their hair long and sometimes exposed their breasts. In the mid-20th century, one old woman was recorded as saying that when she was young she remembered seeing a female from the Styrian municipality of
Donnersbach who carried a swaddled baby. She related that many of the women dressed as would let one breast hang out, but that they were so well disguised that "no one needed to be ashamed." In January 1977, the German anthropologist
Hans Peter Duerr attended the in Styria, noting that by that time there were no more female , with youths instead having taken up all of those roles. == Interpretations ==