CHAPTER VIII. THE KILLING OF THE TREE-SPIRIT.

§ 1. The Whitsuntide Mummers.

(M160) It remains to ask what light the custom of killing the divine king

or priest sheds upon the special subject of our enquiry. In the first part

of this work we saw reason to suppose that the King of the Wood at Nemi

was regarded as an incarnation of a tree-spirit or of the spirit of

vegetation, and that as such he would be endowed, in the belief of his

worshippers, with a magical power of making the trees to bear fruit, the

crops to grow, and so on.(562) His life must therefore have been held very

precious by his worshippers, and was probably hedged in by a system of

elaborate precautions or taboos like those by which, in so many places,

the life of the man-god has been guarded against the malignant influence

of demons and sorcerers. But we have seen that the very value attached to

the life of the man-god necessitates his violent death as the only means

of preserving it from the inevitable decay of age. The same reasoning

would apply to the King of the Wood; he, too, had to be killed in order

that the divine spirit, incarnate in him, might be transferred in its

integrity to his successor. The rule that he held office till a stronger

should slay him might be supposed to secure both the preservation of his

divine life in full vigour and its transference to a suitable successor as

soon as that vigour began to be impaired. For so long as he could maintain

his position by the strong hand, it might be inferred that his natural

force was not abated; whereas his defeat and death at the hands of another

proved that his strength was beginning to fail and that it was time his

divine life should be lodged in a less dilapidated tabernacle. This

explanation of the rule that the King of the Wood had to be slain by his

successor at least renders that rule perfectly intelligible. It is

strongly supported by the theory and practice of the Shilluk, who put

their divine king to death at the first signs of failing health, lest his

decrepitude should entail a corresponding failure of vital energy on the

corn, the cattle, and men.(563) Moreover, it is countenanced by the

analogy of the Chitomé, upon whose life the existence of the world was

supposed to hang, and who was therefore slain by his successor as soon as

he shewed signs of breaking up. Again, the terms on which in later times

the King of Calicut held office are identical with those attached to the

office of King of the Wood, except that whereas the former might be

assailed by a candidate at any time, the King of Calicut might only be

attacked once every twelve years. But as the leave granted to the King of

Calicut to reign so long as he could defend himself against all comers was

a mitigation of the old rule which set a fixed term to his life,(564) so

we may conjecture that the similar permission granted to the King of the

Wood was a mitigation of an older custom of putting him to death at the

end of a definite period. In both cases the new rule gave to the god-man

at least a chance for his life, which under the old rule was denied him;

and people probably reconciled themselves to the change by reflecting that

so long as the god-man could maintain himself by the sword against all

assaults, there was no reason to apprehend that the fatal decay had set

in.

(M161) The conjecture that the King of the Wood was formerly put to death

at the expiry of a fixed term, without being allowed a chance for his

life, will be confirmed if evidence can be adduced of a custom of

periodically killing his counterparts, the human representatives of the

tree-spirit, in Northern Europe. Now in point of fact such a custom has

left unmistakable traces of itself in the rural festivals of the

peasantry. To take examples.

(M162) At Niederpöring, in Lower Bavaria, the Whitsuntide representative

of the tree-spirit—the _Pfingstl_ as he was called—was clad from top to

toe in leaves and flowers. On his head he wore a high pointed cap, the

ends of which rested on his shoulders, only two holes being left in it for

his eyes. The cap was covered with water-flowers and surmounted with a

nosegay of peonies. The sleeves of his coat were also made of

water-plants, and the rest of his body was enveloped in alder and hazel

leaves. On each side of him marched a boy holding up one of the

_Pfingstl’s_ arms. These two boys carried drawn swords, and so did most of

the others who formed the procession. They stopped at every house where

they hoped to receive a present; and the people, in hiding, soused the

leaf-clad boy with water. All rejoiced when he was well drenched. Finally

he waded into the brook up to his middle; whereupon one of the boys,

standing on the bridge, pretended to cut off his head.(565) At Wurmlingen,

in Swabia, a score of young fellows dress themselves on Whit-Monday in

white shirts and white trousers, with red scarves round their waists and

swords hanging from the scarves. They ride on horseback into the wood, led

by two trumpeters blowing their trumpets. In the wood they cut down leafy

oak branches, in which they envelop from head to foot him who was the last

of their number to ride out of the village. His legs, however, are encased

separately, so that he may be able to mount his horse again. Further, they

give him a long artificial neck, with an artificial head and a false face

on the top of it. Then a May-tree is cut, generally an aspen or beech

about ten feet high; and being decked with coloured handkerchiefs and

ribbons it is entrusted to a special “May-bearer.” The cavalcade then

returns with music and song to the village. Amongst the personages who

figure in the procession are a Moorish king with a sooty face and a crown

on his head, a Dr. Iron-Beard, a corporal, and an executioner. They halt

on the village green, and each of the characters makes a speech in rhyme.

The executioner announces that the leaf-clad man has been condemned to

death, and cuts off his false head. Then the riders race to the May-tree,

which has been set up a little way off. The first man who succeeds in

wrenching it from the ground as he gallops past keeps it with all its

decorations. The ceremony is observed every second or third year.(566)

(M163) In Saxony and Thüringen there is a Whitsuntide ceremony called

“chasing the Wild Man out of the bush,” or “fetching the Wild Man out of

the Wood.” A young fellow is enveloped in leaves or moss and called the

Wild Man. He hides in the wood and the other lads of the village go out to

seek him. They find him, lead him captive out of the wood, and fire at him

with blank muskets. He falls like dead to the ground, but a lad dressed as

a doctor bleeds him, and he comes to life again. At this they rejoice,

and, binding him fast on a waggon, take him to the village, where they

tell all the people how they have caught the Wild Man. At every house they

receive a gift.(567) In the Erzgebirge the following custom was annually

observed at Shrovetide about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two

men disguised as Wild Men, the one in brushwood and moss, the other in

straw, were led about the streets, and at last taken to the market-place,

where they were chased up and down, shot and stabbed. Before falling they

reeled about with strange gestures and spirted blood on the people from

bladders which they carried. When they were down the huntsmen placed them

on boards and carried them to the ale-house, the miners marching beside

them and winding blasts on their mining tools as if they had taken a noble

head of game.(568) A very similar Shrovetide custom is still observed near

Schluckenau in Bohemia. A man dressed up as a Wild Man is chased through

several streets till he comes to a narrow lane across which a cord is

stretched. He stumbles over the cord and, falling to the ground, is

overtaken and caught by his pursuers. The executioner runs up and stabs

with his sword a bladder filled with blood which the Wild Man wears round

his body; so the Wild Man dies, while a stream of blood reddens the

ground. Next day a straw-man, made up to look like the Wild Man, is placed

on a litter, and, accompanied by a great crowd, is taken to a pool into

which it is thrown by the executioner. The ceremony is called “burying the

Carnival.”(569)

(M164) In Semic (Bohemia) the custom of beheading the King is observed on

Whit-Monday. A troop of young people disguise themselves; each is girt

with a girdle of bark and carries a wooden sword and a trumpet of

willow-bark. The King wears a robe of tree-bark adorned with flowers, on

his head is a crown of bark decked with flowers and branches, his feet are

wound about with ferns, a mask hides his face, and for a sceptre he has a

hawthorn switch in his hand. A lad leads him through the village by a rope

fastened to his foot, while the rest dance about, blow their trumpets, and

whistle. In every farmhouse the King is chased round the room, and one of

the troop, amid much noise and outcry strikes with his sword a blow on the

King’s robe of bark till it rings again. Then a gratuity is demanded.(570)

The ceremony of decapitation, which is here somewhat slurred over, is

carried out with a greater semblance of reality in other parts of Bohemia.

Thus in some villages of the Königgrätz district on Whit-Monday the girls

assemble under one lime-tree and the young men under another, all dressed

in their best and tricked out with ribbons. The young men twine a garland

for the Queen, and the girls another for the King. When they have chosen

the King and Queen they all go in procession, two and two, to the

ale-house, from the balcony of which the crier proclaims the names of the

King and Queen. Both are then invested with the insignia of their office

and are crowned with the garlands, while the music plays up. Then some one

gets on a bench and accuses the King of various offences, such as

ill-treating the cattle. The King appeals to witnesses and a trial ensues,

at the close of which the judge, who carries a white wand as his badge of

office, pronounces a verdict of “Guilty” or “Not guilty.” If the verdict

is “Guilty,” the judge breaks his wand, the King kneels on a white cloth,

all heads are bared, and a soldier sets three or four hats, one above the

other, on his Majesty’s head. The judge then pronounces the word “Guilty”

thrice in a loud voice, and orders the crier to behead the King. The crier

obeys by striking off the King’s hats with his wooden sword.(571)

(M165) But perhaps, for our purpose, the most instructive of these mimic

executions is the following Bohemian one, which has been in part described

already.(572) In some places of the Pilsen district (Bohemia) on

Whit-Monday the King is dressed in bark, ornamented with flowers and

ribbons; he wears a crown of gilt paper and rides a horse, which is also

decked with flowers. Attended by a judge, an executioner, and other

characters, and followed by a train of soldiers, all mounted, he rides to

the village square, where a hut or arbour of green boughs has been erected

under the May-trees, which are firs, freshly cut, peeled to the top, and

dressed with flowers and ribbons. After the dames and maidens of the

village have been criticised and a frog beheaded, in the way already

described, the cavalcade rides to a place previously determined upon, in a

straight, broad street. Here they draw up in two lines and the King takes

to flight. He is given a short start and rides off at full speed, pursued

by the whole troop. If they fail to catch him he remains King for another

year, and his companions must pay his score at the ale-house in the

evening. But if they overtake and catch him he is scourged with hazel rods

or beaten with the wooden swords and compelled to dismount. Then the

executioner asks, “Shall I behead this King?” The answer is given, “Behead

him”; the executioner brandishes his axe, and with the words, “One, two,

three, let the King headless be!” he strikes off the King’s crown. Amid

the loud cries of the bystanders the King sinks to the ground; then he is

laid on a bier and carried to the nearest farmhouse.(573)

(M166) In most of the personages who are thus slain in mimicry it is

impossible not to recognise representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit

of vegetation, as he is supposed to manifest himself in spring. The bark,

leaves, and flowers in which the actors are dressed, and the season of the

year at which they appear, shew that they belong to the same class as the

Grass King, King of the May, Jack-in-the-Green, and other representatives

of the vernal spirit of vegetation which we examined in the first part of

this work.(574) As if to remove any possible doubt on this head, we find

that in two cases(575) these slain men are brought into direct connexion

with May-trees, which are the impersonal, as the May King, Grass King, and

so forth, are the personal representatives of the tree-spirit. The

drenching of the _Pfingstl_ with water and his wading up to the middle

into the brook are, therefore, no doubt rain-charms like those which have

been already described.(576)

(M167) But if these personages represent, as they certainly do, the spirit

of vegetation in spring, the question arises, Why kill them? What is the

object of slaying the spirit of vegetation at any time and above all in

spring, when his services are most wanted? The only probable answer to

this question seems to be given in the explanation already proposed of the

custom of killing the divine king or priest. The divine life, incarnate in

a material and mortal body, is liable to be tainted and corrupted by the

weakness of the frail medium in which it is for a time enshrined; and if

it is to be saved from the increasing enfeeblement which it must

necessarily share with its human incarnation as he advances in years, it

must be detached from him before, or at least as soon as, he exhibits

signs of decay, in order to be transferred to a vigorous successor. This

is done by killing the old representative of the god and conveying the

divine spirit from him to a new incarnation. The killing of the god, that

is, of his human incarnation, is therefore merely a necessary step to his

revival or resurrection in a better form. Far from being an extinction of

the divine spirit, it is only the beginning of a purer and stronger

manifestation of it. If this explanation holds good of the custom of

killing divine kings and priests in general, it is still more obviously

applicable to the custom of annually killing the representative of the

tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation in spring. For the decay of plant life

in winter is readily interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of

the spirit of vegetation; the spirit has, he thinks, grown old and weak

and must therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a

younger and fresher form. Thus the killing of the representative of the

tree-spirit in spring is regarded as a means to promote and quicken the

growth of vegetation. For the killing of the tree-spirit is associated

always (we must suppose) implicitly, and sometimes explicitly also, with a

revival or resurrection of him in a more youthful and vigorous form. So in

the Saxon and Thüringen custom, after the Wild Man has been shot he is

brought to life again by a doctor;(577) and in the Wurmlingen ceremony

there figures a Dr. Iron-Beard, who probably once played a similar part;

certainly in another spring ceremony, which will be described presently,

Dr. Iron-Beard pretends to restore a dead man to life. But of this revival

or resurrection of the god we shall have more to say anon.

(M168) The points of similarity between these North European personages

and the subject of our enquiry—the King of the Wood or priest of Nemi—are

sufficiently striking. In these northern maskers we see kings, whose dress

of bark and leaves, along with the hut of green boughs and the fir-trees

under which they hold their court, proclaim them unmistakably as, like

their Italian counterpart, Kings of the Wood. Like him they die a violent

death, but like him they may escape from it for a time by their bodily

strength and agility; for in several of these northern customs the flight

and pursuit of the king is a prominent part of the ceremony, and in one

case at least if the king can outrun his pursuers he retains his life and

his office for another year. In this last case the king in fact holds

office on condition of running for his life once a year, just as the King

of Calicut in later times held office on condition of defending his life

against all comers once every twelve years, and just as the priest of Nemi

held office on condition of defending himself against any assault at any

time. In every one of these instances the life of the god-man is prolonged

on condition of his shewing, in a severe physical contest of fight or

flight, that his bodily strength is not decayed, and that, therefore, the

violent death, which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the present be

postponed. With regard to flight it is noticeable that flight figured

conspicuously both in the legend and in the practice of the King of the

Wood. He had to be a runaway slave in memory of the flight of Orestes, the

traditional founder of the worship; hence the Kings of the Wood are

described by an ancient writer as “both strong of hand and fleet of

foot.”(578) Perhaps if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove fully we

might find that the king was allowed a chance for his life by flight, like

his Bohemian brother. I have already conjectured that the annual flight of

the priestly king at Rome (_regifugium_) was at first a flight of the same

kind; in other words, that he was originally one of those divine kings who

are either put to death after a fixed period or allowed to prove by the

strong hand or the fleet foot that their divinity is vigorous and

unimpaired.(579) One more point of resemblance may be noted between the

Italian King of the Wood and his northern counterparts. In Saxony and

Thüringen the representative of the tree-spirit, after being killed, is

brought to life again by a doctor. This is exactly what legend affirmed to

have happened to the first King of the Wood at Nemi, Hippolytus or

Virbius, who after he had been killed by his horses was restored to life

by the physician Aesculapius.(580) Such a legend tallies well with the

theory that the slaying of the King of the Wood was only a step to his

revival or resurrection in his successor.

§ 2. Mock Human Sacrifices.

(M169) In the preceding discussion it has been assumed that the mock

killing of the Wild Man and of the King in North European folk-custom is a

modern substitute for an ancient custom of killing them in earnest. Those

who best know the tenacity of life possessed by folk-custom and its

tendency, with the growth of civilisation, to dwindle from solemn ritual

into mere pageant and pastime, will be least likely to question the truth

of this assumption. That human sacrifices were commonly offered by the

ancestors of the civilised races of North Europe, Celts, Teutons, and

Slavs, is certain.(581) It is not, therefore, surprising that the modern

peasant should do in mimicry what his forefathers did in reality. We know

as a matter of fact that in other parts of the world mock human sacrifices

have been substituted for real ones. Thus in Minahassa, a district of

Celebes, human victims used to be regularly sacrificed at certain

festivals, but through Dutch influence the custom was abolished and a sham

sacrifice substituted for it. The victim was seated in a chair and all the

usual preparations were made for sacrificing him, but at the critical

moment, when the chief priest had heaved up his flashing swords (for he

wielded two of them) to deal the fatal stroke, his assistants sprang

forward, their hands wrapt in cloths, to grasp and arrest the descending

blades. The precaution was necessary, for the priest was wound up to such

a pitch of excitement that if left alone he might have consummated the

sacrifice. Afterwards an effigy, made out of the stem of a banana-tree,

was substituted for the human victim; and the blood, which might not be

wanting, was supplied by fowls.(582) Near the native town of Luba, in

western Busoga, a district of central Africa, there is a sacred tree of

the species known as _Parinarium_. Its glossy white trunk shoots up to a

height of a hundred feet before it sends out branches. The tree is

surrounded by small fetish huts and curious arcades. Once when the dry

season was drawing to an end and the new crops were not yet ripe, the

Basoga suffered from hunger. So they came to the sacred tree in canoes, of

which the prows were decked with wreaths of yellow acacia blossom and

other flowers. Landing on the shore they stripped themselves of their

clothing and wrapped ropes made of green creepers and leaves round their

arms and necks. At the foot of the tree they danced to an accompaniment of

song. Then a little girl, about ten years old, was brought and laid at the

base of the tree as if she were to be sacrificed. Every detail of the

sacrifice was gone through in mimicry. A slight cut was made in the

child’s neck, and she was then caught up and thrown into the lake, where a

man stood ready to save her from drowning. By native custom the girl on

whom this ceremony had been performed was dedicated to a life of perpetual

virginity.(583) Captain Bourke was informed by an old chief that the

Indians of Arizona used to offer human sacrifices at the Feast of Fire

when the days are shortest. The victim had his throat cut, his breast

opened, and his heart taken out by one of the priests. This custom was

abolished by the Mexicans, but for a long time afterwards a modified form

of it was secretly observed as follows. The victim, generally a young man,

had his throat cut, and blood was allowed to flow freely; but the

medicine-men sprinkled “medicine” on the gash, which soon healed up, and

the man recovered.(584) So in the ritual of Artemis at Halae in Attica, a

man’s throat was cut and the blood allowed to gush out, but he was not

killed.(585) At the funeral of a chief in Nias slaves are sacrificed; a

little of their hair is cut off, and then they are beheaded. The victims

are generally purchased for the purpose, and their number is proportioned

to the wealth and power of the deceased. But if the number required is

excessively great or cannot be procured, some of the chiefs own slaves

undergo a sham sacrifice. They are told, and believe, that they are about

to be decapitated; their heads are placed on a log and their necks struck

with the back of a sword. The fright drives some of them crazy.(586) When

a Hindoo has killed or ill-treated an ape, a bird of prey of a certain

kind, or a cobra capella, in the presence of the worshippers of Vishnu, he

must expiate his offence by the pretended sacrifice and resurrection of a

human being. An incision is made in the victim’s arm, the blood flows, he

grows faint, falls, and feigns to die. Afterwards he is brought to life by

being sprinkled with blood drawn from the thigh of a worshipper of Vishnu.

The crowd of spectators is fully convinced of the reality of this

simulated death and resurrection.(587) The Malayans, a caste of Southern

India, act as devil dancers for the purpose of exorcising demons who have

taken possession of people. One of their ceremonies, “known as

_ucchav[-e]li_, has several forms, all of which seem to be either

survivals, or at least imitations of human sacrifice. One of these

consists of a mock living burial of the principal performer, who is placed

in a pit, which is covered with planks, on the top of which a sacrifice is

performed, with a fire kindled with jack wood (_Artocarpus integrifolia_)

and a plant called erinna. In another variety, the Malayan cuts his left

forearm, and smears his face with the blood thus drawn.”(588) In Samoa,

where every family had its god incarnate in one or more species of

animals, any disrespect shewn to the worshipful animal, either by members

of the kin or by a stranger in their presence, had to be atoned for by

pretending to bake one of the family in a cold oven as a burnt sacrifice

to appease the wrath of the offended god. For example, if a stranger

staying in a household whose god was incarnate in cuttle-fish were to

catch and cook one of these creatures, or if a member of the family had

been present where a cuttle-fish was eaten, the family would meet in

solemn conclave and choose a man or woman to go and lie down in a cold

oven, where he would be covered over with leaves, just as if he were

really being baked. While this mock sacrifice was being carried out the

family prayed: “O bald-headed Cuttle-fish! forgive what has been done, it

was all the work of a stranger.” If they had not thus abased themselves

before the divine cuttle-fish, he would undoubtedly have come and been the

death of somebody by making a cuttle-fish to grow in his inside.(589)

(M170) Sometimes, as in Minahassa, the pretended sacrifice is carried out,

not on a living person, but on an effigy. At the City of the Sun in

ancient Egypt three men used to be sacrificed every day, after the priests

had stripped and examined them, like calves, to see whether they were

without blemish and fit for the altar. But King Amasis ordered waxen

images to be substituted for the human victims.(590) An Indian law-book,

the _Calica Puran_, prescribes that when the sacrifice of lions, tigers,

or human beings is required, an image of a lion, tiger, or man shall be

made with butter, paste, or barley meal, and sacrificed instead.(591) Some

of the Gonds of India formerly offered human sacrifices; they now

sacrifice straw-men, which are found to answer the purpose just as

well.(592) Colonel Dalton was told that in some of their villages the

Bhagats “annually make an image of a man in wood, put clothes and

ornaments on it, and present it before the altar of a Mahádeo. The person

who officiates as priest on the occasion says: ‘O Mahádeo, we sacrifice

this man to you according to ancient customs. Give us rain in due season,

and a plentiful harvest.’ Then with one stroke of the axe the head of the

image is struck off, and the body is removed and buried.”(593) Formerly,

when a Siamese army was about to take the field a condemned criminal

representing the enemy was put to death, but a humane king caused a puppet

to be substituted for the man. The effigy is felled by the blow of an axe,

and if it drops at the first stroke, the omen is favourable.(594) In the

East Indian island of Siaoo or Siauw, one of the Sangi group, a child

stolen from a neighbouring island used to be sacrificed every year to the

spirit of a volcano in order that there might be no eruption. The victim

was slowly tortured to death in the temple by a priestess, who cut off the

child’s ears, nose, fingers, and so on, then consummated the sacrifice by

splitting open the breast. The spectacle was witnessed by hundreds of

people, and feasting and cock-fighting went on for nine days afterwards.

In course of time the annual human victim was replaced by a wooden puppet,

which was cut to pieces in the same manner.(595) The Kayans of Borneo used

to kill slaves at the death of a chief and nail them to the tomb, in order

that they might accompany the chief on his long journey to the other world

and paddle the canoe in which he must travel. This is no longer done, but

instead they put up a wooden figure of a man at the head and another of a

woman at the foot of the chief’s coffin as it lies in state before the

funeral. And a small wooden image of a man is usually fixed on the top of

the tomb to row the canoe for the dead chief.(596) In ancient times human

sacrifices used to be offered at the graves of Mikados and princes of

Japan, the personal attendants of the deceased being buried alive within

the precincts of the tomb. But a humane emperor ordered that clay images

should thenceforth be substituted for live men and women. One of these

images is now in the British Museum.(597) The Toboongkoos of central

Celebes, who are reported still to carry home as trophies the heads of

their slain enemies, resort to the following cure for certain kinds of

sickness. The heathen priestess cuts the likeness of a human head out of

the sheath of a sago-leaf and sets it up on three sticks in the courtyard

of the house. The patient, arrayed in his or her best clothes, is then

brought down into the court and remains there while women dance and sing

round the artificial head, and men perform sham fights with shield, spear,

and bow, just as they did, or perhaps still do, when they have brought

back a human head from a raid. After that the sick man is taken back to

the house, and an improvement in his health is confidently expected.(598)

In this ceremony the sham head is doubtless a substitute for a real one.

(M171) With these mock sacrifices of human lives we may compare mimic

sacrifices of other kinds. In southern India, as in many parts of the

world, it used to be customary to sacrifice joints of the fingers on

certain occasions. Thus among the Morasas, when a grandchild was born in

the family, the wife of the eldest son of the grandfather must have the

last two joints of the third and fourth fingers of her right hand

amputated at a temple of Bhairava. The amputation was performed by the

village carpenter with a chisel. Nowadays, the custom having been

forbidden by the English Government, the sacrifice is performed in

mimicry. Some people stick gold or silver pieces with flour paste to the

ends of their fingers and then cut or pull them off. Others tie flowers

round the fingers that used to be amputated, and go through a pantomime of

cutting the fingers by putting a chisel on the joint and then taking it

away. Others again twist gold wires in the shape of rings round their

fingers. These the carpenter removes and appropriates.(599) In Niué or

Savage Island, in the South Pacific, the following custom continued till

lately to be observed. When a boy was a few weeks old the men assembled,

and a feast was made. On the village square an awning was rigged up, and

the child was laid on the ground under it. An old man then approached it,

and performed the operation of circumcision on the infant in dumb show

with his forefinger. No child was regarded as a full-born member of the

tribe till he had been subjected to this rite. The natives say that real

circumcision was never performed in their island; but as it was commonly

practised in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, we may assume that its imitation in

Niué was a substitute, introduced at some time or other, for the actual

operation.(600) Similarly when an adult Hindoo joins the sect of the Daira

or Mahadev Mohammedans in Mysore, a mock rite of circumcision is performed

on him instead of the real operation. A betel leaf is wrapped round the

male member of the neophyte and the loose end of the leaf is snipped off

instead of the prepuce.(601)

§ 3. Burying the Carnival.

(M172) Thus far I have offered an explanation of the rule which required

that the priest of Nemi should be slain by his successor. The explanation

claims to be no more than probable; our scanty knowledge of the custom and

of its history forbids it to be more. But its probability will be

augmented in proportion to the extent to which the motives and modes of

thought which it assumes can be proved to have operated in primitive

society. Hitherto the god with whose death and resurrection we have been

chiefly concerned has been the tree-god. But if I can shew that the custom

of killing the god and the belief in his resurrection originated, or at

least existed, in the hunting and pastoral stage of society, when the

slain god was an animal, and that it survived into the agricultural stage,

when the slain god was the corn or a human being representing the corn,

the probability of my explanation will have been considerably increased.

This I shall attempt to do in the sequel, and in the course of the

discussion I hope to clear up some obscurities which still remain, and to

answer some objections which may have suggested themselves to the reader.

(M173) We start from the point at which we left off—the spring customs of

European peasantry. Besides the ceremonies already described there are two

kindred sets of observances in which the simulated death of a divine or

supernatural being is a conspicuous feature. In one of them the being

whose death is dramatically represented is a personification of the

Carnival; in the other it is Death himself. The former ceremony falls

naturally at the end of the Carnival, either on the last day of that merry

season, namely Shrove Tuesday, or on the first day of Lent, namely Ash

Wednesday. The date of the other ceremony—the Carrying or Driving out of

Death, as it is commonly called—is not so uniformly fixed. Generally it is

the fourth Sunday in Lent, which hence goes by the name of Dead Sunday;

but in some places the celebration falls a week earlier, in others, as

among the Czechs of Bohemia, a week later, while in certain German

villages of Moravia it is held on the first Sunday after Easter. Perhaps,

as has been suggested, the date may originally have been variable,

depending on the appearance of the first swallow or some other herald of

the spring. Some writers regard the ceremony as Slavonic in its origin.

Grimm thought it was a festival of the New Year with the old Slavs, who

began their year in March.(602) We shall first take examples of the mimic

death of the Carnival, which always falls before the other in the

calendar.

(M174) At Frosinone, in Latium, about half-way between Rome and Naples,

the dull monotony of life in a provincial Italian town is agreeably broken

on the last day of the Carnival by the ancient festival known as the

_Radica_. About four o’clock in the afternoon the town band, playing

lively tunes and followed by a great crowd, proceeds to the Piazza del

Plebiscito, where is the Sub-Prefecture as well as the rest of the

Government buildings. Here, in the middle of the square, the eyes of the

expectant multitude are greeted by the sight of an immense car decked with

many-coloured festoons and drawn by four horses. Mounted on the car is a

huge chair, on which sits enthroned the majestic figure of the Carnival, a

man of stucco about nine feet high with a rubicund and smiling

countenance. Enormous boots, a tin helmet like those which grace the heads

of officers of the Italian marine, and a coat of many colours embellished

with strange devices, adorn the outward man of this stately personage. His

left hand rests on the arm of the chair, while with his right he

gracefully salutes the crowd, being moved to this act of civility by a

string which is pulled by a man who modestly shrinks from publicity under

the mercy-seat. And now the crowd, surging excitedly round the car, gives

vent to its feelings in wild cries of joy, gentle and simple being mixed

up together and all dancing furiously the _Saltarello_. A special feature

of the festival is that every one must carry in his hand what is called a

_radica_ (“root”), by which is meant a huge leaf of the aloe or rather the

agave. Any one who ventured into the crowd without such a leaf would be

unceremoniously hustled out of it, unless indeed he bore as a substitute a

large cabbage at the end of a long stick or a bunch of grass curiously

plaited. When the multitude, after a short turn, has escorted the

slow-moving car to the gate of the Sub-Prefecture, they halt, and the car,

jolting over the uneven ground, rumbles into the courtyard. A hush now

falls on the crowd, their subdued voices sounding, according to the

description of one who has heard them, like the murmur of a troubled sea.

All eyes are turned anxiously to the door from which the Sub-Prefect

himself and the other representatives of the majesty of the law are

expected to issue and pay their homage to the hero of the hour. A few

moments of suspense and then a storm of cheers and hand-clapping salutes

the appearance of the dignitaries, as they file out and, descending the

staircase, take their place in the procession. The hymn of the Carnival is

now thundered out, after which, amid a deafening roar, aloe leaves and

cabbages are whirled aloft and descend impartially on the heads of the

just and the unjust, who lend fresh zest to the proceedings by engaging in

a free fight. When these preliminaries have been concluded to the

satisfaction of all concerned, the procession gets under weigh. The rear

is brought up by a cart laden with barrels of wine and policemen, the

latter engaged in the congenial task of serving out wine to all who ask

for it, while a most internecine struggle, accompanied by a copious

discharge of yells, blows, and blasphemy, goes on among the surging crowd

at the cart’s tail in their anxiety not to miss the glorious opportunity

of intoxicating themselves at the public expense. Finally, after the

procession has paraded the principal streets in this majestic manner, the

effigy of Carnival is taken to the middle of a public square, stripped of

his finery, laid on a pile of wood, and burnt amid the cries of the

multitude, who thundering out once more the song of the Carnival fling

their so-called “roots” on the pyre and give themselves up without

restraint to the pleasures of the dance.(603)

(M175) In the Abruzzi a pasteboard figure of the Carnival is carried by

four grave-diggers with pipes in their mouths and bottles of wine slung at

their shoulder-belts. In front walks the wife of the Carnival, dressed in

mourning and dissolved in tears. From time to time the company halts, and

while the wife addresses the sympathising public, the grave-diggers

refresh the inner man with a pull at the bottle. In the open square the

mimic corpse is laid on a pyre, and to the roll of drums, the shrill

screams of the women, and the gruffer cries of the men a light is set to

it. While the figure burns, chestnuts are thrown about among the crowd.

Sometimes the Carnival is represented by a straw-man at the top of a pole

which is borne through the town by a troop of mummers in the course of the

afternoon. When evening comes on, four of the mummers hold out a quilt or

sheet by the corners, and the figure of the Carnival is made to tumble

into it. The procession is then resumed, the performers weeping crocodile

tears and emphasising the poignancy of their grief by the help of

saucepans and dinner bells. Sometimes, again, in the Abruzzi the dead

Carnival is personified by a living man who lies in a coffin, attended by

another who acts the priest and dispenses holy water in great profusion

from a bathing tub.(604) In Malta the death of the Carnival used to be

mourned by women on the last day of the merry festival. Clad from head to

foot in black mantles, they carried through the streets of the city the

linen effigy of a corpse, stuffed with straw or hay and decked with leaves

and oranges. As they carried it, they chanted dirges, stopping after every

verse to howl like professional mourners. The custom came to an end about

the year 1737.(605)

(M176) At Lerida, in Catalonia, the funeral of the Carnival was witnessed

by an English traveller in 1877. On the last Sunday of the Carnival a

grand procession of infantry, cavalry, and maskers of many sorts, some on

horseback and some in carriages, escorted the grand car of His Grace Pau

Pi, as the effigy was called, in triumph through the principal streets.

For three days the revelry ran high, and then at midnight on the last day

of the Carnival the same procession again wound through the streets, but

under a different aspect and for a different end. The triumphal car was

exchanged for a hearse, in which reposed the effigy of his dead Grace: a

troop of maskers, who in the first procession had played the part of

Students of Folly with many a merry quip and jest, now, robed as priests

and bishops, paced slowly along holding aloft huge lighted tapers and

singing a dirge. All the mummers wore crape, and all the horsemen carried

blazing flambeaux. Down the high street, between the lofty, many-storeyed

and balconied houses, where every window, every balcony, every housetop

was crammed with a dense mass of spectators, all dressed and masked in

fantastic gorgeousness, the procession took its melancholy way. Over the

scene flashed and played the shifting cross-lights and shadows from the

moving torches: red and blue Bengal lights flared up and died out again;

and above the trampling of the horses and the measured tread of the

marching multitude rose the voices of the priests chanting the requiem,

while the military bands struck in with the solemn roll of the muffled

drums. On reaching the principal square the procession halted, a burlesque

funeral oration was pronounced over the defunct Pau Pi, and the lights

were extinguished. Immediately the devil and his angels darted from the

crowd, seized the body and fled away with it, hotly pursued by the whole

multitude, yelling, screaming, and cheering. Naturally the fiends were

overtaken and dispersed; and the sham corpse, rescued from their clutches,

was laid in a grave that had been made ready for its reception. Thus the

Carnival of 1877 at Lerida died and was buried.(606)

(M177) A ceremony of the same sort is observed in Provence on Ash

Wednesday. An effigy called Caramantran, whimsically attired, is drawn in

a chariot or borne on a litter, accompanied by the populace in grotesque

costumes, who carry gourds full of wine and drain them with all the marks,

real or affected, of intoxication. At the head of the procession are some

men disguised as judges and barristers, and a tall gaunt personage who

masquerades as Lent; behind them follow young people mounted on miserable

hacks and attired as mourners who pretend to bewail the fate that is in

store for Caramantran. In the principal square the procession halts, the

tribunal is constituted, and Caramantran placed at the bar. After a formal

trial he is sentenced to death amid the groans of the mob; the barrister

who defended him embraces his client for the last time: the officers of

justice do their duty: the condemned is set with his back to a wall and

hurried into eternity under a shower of stones. The sea or a river

receives his mangled remains.(607) At Lussac in the department of Vienne

young people, attired in long mourning robes and with woebegone

countenances, carry an effigy down to the river on Ash Wednesday and throw

it into the river, crying, “Carnival is dead! Carnival is dead!”(608)

Throughout nearly the whole of the Ardennes it was and still is customary

on Ash Wednesday to burn an effigy which is supposed to represent the

Carnival, while appropriate verses are sung round about the blazing

figure. Very often an attempt is made to fashion the effigy in the

likeness of the husband who is reputed to be least faithful to his wife of

any in the village. As might perhaps have been anticipated, the

distinction of being selected for portraiture under these painful

circumstances has a slight tendency to breed domestic jars, especially

when the portrait is burnt in front of the house of the gay deceiver whom

it represents, while a powerful chorus of caterwauls, groans, and other

melodious sounds bears public testimony to the opinion which his friends

and neighbours entertain of his private virtues. In some villages of the

Ardennes a young man of flesh and blood, dressed up in hay and straw, used

to act the part of Shrove Tuesday (_Mardi Gras_), as the personification

of the Carnival is often called in France after the last day of the period

which he personates. He was brought before a mock tribunal, and being

condemned to death was placed with his back to a wall, like a soldier at a

military execution, and fired at with blank cartridges. At Vrigne-aux-Bois

one of these harmless buffoons, named Thierry, was accidentally killed by

a wad that had been left in a musket of the firing-party. When poor Shrove

Tuesday dropped under the fire, the applause was loud and long, he did it

so naturally; but when he did not get up again, they ran to him and found

him a corpse. Since then there have been no more of these mock executions

in the Ardennes.(609) In Franche-Comté people used to make an effigy of

Shrove Tuesday on Ash Wednesday, and carry it about the streets to the

accompaniment of songs. Then they brought it to the public square, where

the offender was tried in front of the town-hall. Judges muffled in old

red curtains and holding big books in their hands pronounced sentence of

death. The mode of execution varied with the place. Sometimes it was

burning, sometimes drowning, sometimes decapitation. In the last case the

effigy was provided with tubes of blood, which spouted gore at the

critical moment, making a profound impression on the minds of children,

some of whom wept bitterly at the sight. Meantime the onlookers uttered

piercing cries and appeared to be plunged in the deepest grief. The

proceedings generally wound up in the evening with a ball, which the young

married people were obliged to provide for the public entertainment;

otherwise their slumbers were apt to be disturbed by the discordant notes

of a cat’s concert chanted under their windows.(610)

(M178) In Normandy on the evening of Ash Wednesday it used to be the

custom to hold a celebration called the Burial of Shrove Tuesday. A

squalid effigy scantily clothed in rags, a battered old hat crushed down

on his dirty face, his great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented

the disreputable old rake who after a long course of dissipation was now

about to suffer for his sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow,

who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of

the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the

reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering

rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town

mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering

light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and

pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From

time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the

broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for which

he was now about to be burned alive. The culprit, having nothing to urge

in his own defence, was thrown on a heap of straw, a torch was put to it,

and a great blaze shot up, to the delight of the children who frisked

round it screaming out some old popular verses about the death of the

Carnival. Sometimes the effigy was rolled down the slope of a hill before

being burnt.(611) At Saint-Lô the ragged effigy of Shrove Tuesday was

followed by his widow, a big burly lout dressed as a woman with a crape

veil, who emitted sounds of lamentation and woe in a stentorian voice.

After being carried about the streets on a litter attended by a crowd of

maskers, the figure was thrown into the River Vire. The final scene has

been graphically described by Madame Octave Feuillet as she witnessed it

in her childhood some fifty years ago. “My parents invited friends to see,

from the top of the tower of Jeanne Couillard, the funeral procession

passing. It was there that, quaffing lemonade—the only refreshment allowed

because of the fast—we witnessed at nightfall a spectacle of which I shall

always preserve a lively recollection. At our feet flowed the Vire under

its old stone bridge. On the middle of the bridge lay the figure of Shrove

Tuesday on a litter of leaves, surrounded by scores of maskers dancing,

singing, and carrying torches. Some of them in their motley costumes ran

along the parapet like fiends. The rest, worn out with their revels, sat

on the posts and dozed. Soon the dancing stopped, and some of the troop,

seizing a torch, set fire to the effigy, after which they flung it into

the river with redoubled shouts and clamour. The man of straw, soaked with

resin, floated away burning down the stream of the Vire, lighting up with

its funeral fires the woods on the bank and the battlements of the old

castle in which Louis XI. and Francis I. had slept. When the last glimmer

of the blazing phantom had vanished, like a falling star, at the end of

the valley, every one withdrew, crowd and maskers alike, and we quitted

the ramparts with our guests. As we returned home my father sang gaily the

old popular song:—

_“__Shrove Tuesday is dead and his wife has got_

_His shabby pocket-handkerchief and his cracked old pot._

_Sing high, sing low,_

_Shrove Tuesday will come back no more.__”_

‘He will come back! He will come back!’ we cried warmly, clapping our

hands; and he did come back next year, and I think I should see him still

if, after the lapse of half a century, I returned to the land of my

birth.”(612)

(M179) In Upper Brittany the burial of Shrove Tuesday or the Carnival is

sometimes performed in a ceremonious manner. Four young fellows carry a

straw-man or one of their companions, and are followed by a funeral

procession. A show is made of depositing the pretended corpse in the

grave, after which the bystanders make believe to mourn, crying out in

melancholy tones, “Ah! my poor little Shrove Tuesday!” The boy who played

the part of Shrove Tuesday bears the name for the whole year.(613) At

Lesneven in Lower Brittany it was formerly the custom on Ash Wednesday to

burn a straw-man, covered with rags, after he had been promenaded about

the town. He was followed by a representative of Shrove Tuesday clothed

with sardines and cods’ tails.(614) At Pontaven in Finistère an effigy

representing the Carnival used to be thrown from the quay into the sea on

the morning of Ash Wednesday.(615) At La Rochelle the porters and sailors

carried about a man of straw representing Shrove Tuesday, then burned it

on Ash Wednesday and flung the ashes into the sea.(616) In Saintonge and

Aunis, which correspond roughly to the modern departments of Charente,

children used to drown or burn a figure of the Carnival on the morning of

Ash Wednesday.(617) The beginning of Lent in England was formerly marked

by a custom which has now fallen into disuse. A figure, made up of straw

and cast-off clothes, was drawn or carried through the streets amid much

noise and merriment; after which it was either burnt, shot at, or thrown

down a chimney. This image went by the name of Jack o’ Lent, and was by

some supposed to represent Judas Iscariot.(618)

(M180) A Bohemian form of the custom of “Burying the Carnival” has been

already described.(619) The following Swabian form is obviously similar.

In the neighbourhood of Tübingen on Shrove Tuesday a straw-man, called the

Shrovetide Bear, is made up; he is dressed in a pair of old trousers, and

a fresh black-pudding or two squirts filled with blood are inserted in his

neck. After a formal condemnation he is beheaded, laid in a coffin, and on

Ash Wednesday is buried in the churchyard. This is called “Burying the

Carnival.”(620) Amongst some of the Saxons of Transylvania the Carnival is

hanged. Thus at Braller on Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday two white and

two chestnut horses draw a sledge on which is placed a straw-man swathed

in a white cloth; beside him is a cart-wheel which is kept turning round.

Two lads disguised as old men follow the sledge lamenting. The rest of the

village lads, mounted on horseback and decked with ribbons, accompany the

procession, which is headed by two girls crowned with evergreen and drawn

in a waggon or sledge. A trial is held under a tree, at which lads

disguised as soldiers pronounce sentence of death. The two old men try to

rescue the straw-man and to fly with him, but to no purpose; he is caught

by the two girls and handed over to the executioner, who hangs him on a

tree. In vain the old men try to climb up the tree and take him down; they

always tumble down, and at last in despair they throw themselves on the

ground and weep and howl for the hanged man. An official then makes a

speech in which he declares that the Carnival was condemned to death

because he had done them harm, by wearing out their shoes and making them

tired and sleepy.(621) At the “Burial of Carnival” in Lechrain, a man

dressed as a woman in black clothes is carried on a litter or bier by four

men; he is lamented over by men disguised as women in black clothes, then

thrown down before the village dung-heap, drenched with water, buried in

the dung-heap, and covered with straw.(622) Similarly in Schörzingen, near

Schömberg, the “Carnival (Shrovetide) Fool” was carried all about the

village on a bier, preceded by a man dressed in white, and followed by a

devil who was dressed in black and carried chains, which he clanked. One

of the train collected gifts. After the procession the Fool was buried

under straw and dung.(623) In Rottweil the “Carnival Fool” is made drunk

on Ash Wednesday and buried under straw amid loud lamentation.(624) In

Wurmlingen the Fool is represented by a young fellow enveloped in straw,

who is led about the village by a rope as a “Bear” on Shrove Tuesday and

the preceding day. He dances to the flute. Then on Ash Wednesday a

straw-man is made, placed on a trough, carried out of the village to the

sound of drums and mournful music, and buried in a field.(625) In Altdorf

and Weingarten on Ash Wednesday the Fool, represented by a straw-man, is

carried about and then thrown into the water to the accompaniment of

melancholy music. In other villages of Swabia the part of fool is played

by a live person, who is thrown into the water after being carried about

in procession.(626) At Balwe, in Westphalia, a straw-man is made on Shrove

Tuesday and thrown into the river amid rejoicings. This is called, as

usual, “Burying the Carnival.”(627) At Burgebrach, in Bavaria, it used to

be customary, as a public pastime, to hold a sort of court of justice on

Ash Wednesday. The accused was a straw-man, on whom was laid the burden of

all the notorious transgressions that had been committed in the course of

the year. Twelve chosen maidens sat in judgment and pronounced sentence,

and a single advocate pleaded the cause of the public scapegoat. Finally

the effigy was burnt, and thus all the offences that had created a scandal

in the community during the year were symbolically atoned for. We can

hardly doubt that this custom of burning a straw-man on Ash Wednesday for

the sins of a whole year is only another form of the custom, observed on

the same day in so many other places, of burning an effigy which is

supposed to embody and to be responsible for all the excesses committed

during the licence of the Carnival.

(M181) In Greece a ceremony of the same sort was witnessed at Pylos by Mr.

E. L. Tilton in 1895. On the evening of the first day of the Greek Lent,

which fell that year on the twenty-fifth of February, an effigy with a

grotesque mask for a face was borne about the streets on a bier, preceded

by a mock priest with long white beard. Other functionaries surrounded the

bier and two torch-bearers walked in advance. The procession moved slowly

to melancholy music played by a pipe and drum. A final halt was made in

the public square, where a circular space was kept clear of the surging

crowd. Here a bonfire was kindled, and round it the priest led a wild

dance to the same droning music. When the frenzy was at its height, the

chief performer put tow on the effigy and set fire to it, and while it

blazed he resumed his mad career, brandishing torches and tearing off his

venerable beard to add fuel to the flames.(628) On the evening of Shrove

Tuesday the Esthonians make a straw figure called _metsik_ or

“wood-spirit”; one year it is dressed with a man’s coat and hat, next year

with a hood and a petticoat. This figure is stuck on a long pole, carried

across the boundary of the village with loud cries of joy, and fastened to

the top of a tree in the wood. The ceremony is believed to be a protection

against all kinds of misfortune.(629)

(M182) Sometimes at these Shrovetide or Lenten ceremonies the resurrection

of the pretended dead person is enacted. Thus, in some parts of Swabia on

Shrove Tuesday Dr. Iron-Beard professes to bleed a sick man, who thereupon

falls as dead to the ground; but the doctor at last restores him to life

by blowing air into him through a tube.(630) In the Harz Mountains, when

Carnival is over, a man is laid on a baking-trough and carried with dirges

to a grave; but in the grave a glass of brandy is buried instead of the

man. A speech is delivered and then the people return to the village-green

or meeting-place, where they smoke the long clay pipes which are

distributed at funerals. On the morning of Shrove Tuesday in the following

year the brandy is dug up and the festival begins by every one tasting the

spirit which, as the phrase goes, has come to life again.(631)

§ 4. Carrying out Death.

(M183) The ceremony of “Carrying out Death” presents much the same

features as “Burying the Carnival”; except that the carrying out of Death

is generally followed by a ceremony, or at least accompanied by a

profession, of bringing in Summer, Spring, or Life. Thus in Middle

Franken, a province of Bavaria, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, the village

urchins used to make a straw effigy of Death, which they carried about

with burlesque pomp through the streets, and afterwards burned with loud

cries beyond the bounds.(632) The Frankish custom is thus described by a

writer of the sixteenth century: “At Mid-Lent, the season when the church

bids us rejoice, the young people of my native country make a straw image

of Death, and fastening it to a pole carry it with shouts to the

neighbouring villages. By some they are kindly received, and after being

refreshed with milk, peas, and dried pears, the usual food of that season,

are sent home again. Others, however, treat them with anything but

hospitality; for, looking on them as harbingers of misfortune, to wit of

death, they drive them from their boundaries with weapons and

insults.”(633) In the villages near Erlangen, when the fourth Sunday in

Lent came round, the peasant girls used to dress themselves in all their

finery with flowers in their hair. Thus attired they repaired to the

neighbouring town, carrying puppets which were adorned with leaves and

covered with white cloths. These they took from house to house in pairs,

stopping at every door where they expected to receive something, and

singing a few lines in which they announced that it was Mid-Lent and that

they were about to throw Death into the water. When they had collected

some trifling gratuities they went to the river Regnitz and flung the

puppets representing Death into the stream. This was done to ensure a

fruitful and prosperous year; further, it was considered a safeguard

against pestilence and sudden death.(634) At Nuremberg girls of seven to

eighteen years of age go through the streets bearing a little open coffin,

in which is a doll hidden under a shroud. Others carry a beech branch,

with an apple fastened to it for a head, in an open box. They sing, “We

carry Death into the water, it is well,” or “We carry Death into the

water, carry him in and out again.”(635) In other parts of Bavaria the

ceremony took place on the Saturday before the fifth Sunday in Lent, and

the performers were boys or girls, according to the sex of the last person

who died in the village. The figure was thrown into water or buried in a

secret place, for example under moss in the forest, that no one might find

Death again. Then early on Sunday morning the children went from house to

house singing a song in which they announced the glad tidings that Death

was gone.(636) In some parts of Bavaria down to 1780 it was believed that

a fatal epidemic would ensue if the custom of “Carrying out Death” were

not observed.(637)

(M184) In some villages of Thüringen, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, the

children used to carry a puppet of birchen twigs through the village, and

then threw it into a pool, while they sang, “We carry the old Death out

behind the herdsman’s old house; we have got Summer, and Kroden’s (?)

power is destroyed.”(638) At Debschwitz or Dobschwitz, near Gera, the

ceremony of “Driving out Death” is or was annually observed on the first

of March. The young people make up a figure of straw or the like

materials, dress it in old clothes, which they have begged from houses in

the village, and carry it out and throw it into the river. On returning to

the village they break the good news to the people, and receive eggs and

other victuals as a reward. The ceremony is or was supposed to purify the

village and to protect the inhabitants from sickness and plague. In other

villages of Thüringen, in which the population was originally Slavonic,

the carrying out of the puppet is accompanied with the singing of a song,

which begins, “Now we carry Death out of the village and Spring into the

village.”(639) At the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the

eighteenth century the custom was observed in Thüringen as follows. The

boys and girls made an effigy of straw or the like materials, but the

shape of the figure varied from year to year. In one year it would

represent an old man, in the next an old woman, in the third a young man,

and in the fourth a maiden, and the dress of the figure varied with the

character it personated. There used to be a sharp contest as to where the

effigy was to be made, for the people thought that the house from which it

was carried forth would not be visited with death that year. Having been

made, the puppet was fastened to a pole and carried by a girl if it

represented an old man, but by a boy if it represented an old woman. Thus

it was borne in procession, the young people holding sticks in their hands

and singing that they were driving out Death. When they came to water they

threw the effigy into it and ran hastily back, fearing that it might jump

on their shoulders and wring their necks. They also took care not to touch

it, lest it should dry them up. On their return they beat the cattle with

the sticks, believing that this would make the animals fat or fruitful.

Afterwards they visited the house or houses from which they had carried

the image of Death, where they received a dole of half-boiled peas.(640)

The custom of “Carrying out Death” was practised also in Saxony. At

Leipsic the bastards and public women used to make a straw effigy of Death

every year at Mid-Lent. This they carried through all the streets with

songs and shewed it to the young married women. Finally they threw it into

the river Parthe. By this ceremony they professed to make the young wives

fruitful, to purify the city, and to protect the inhabitants for that year

from plague and other epidemics.(641)

(M185) Ceremonies of the same sort are observed at Mid-Lent in Silesia.

Thus in many places the grown girls with the help of the young men dress

up a straw figure with women’s clothes and carry it out of the village

towards the setting sun. At the boundary they strip it of its clothes,

tear it in pieces, and scatter the fragments about the fields. This is

called “Burying Death.” As they carry the image out, they sing that they

are about to bury death under an oak, that he may depart from the people.

Sometimes the song runs that they are bearing death over hill and dale to

return no more. In the Polish neighbourhood of Gross-Strehlitz the puppet

is called Goik. It is carried on horseback and thrown into the nearest

water. The people think that the ceremony protects them from sickness of

every sort in the coming year. In the districts of Wohlau and Guhrau the

image of Death used to be thrown over the boundary of the next village.

But as the neighbours feared to receive the ill-omened figure, they were

on the look-out to repel it, and hard knocks were often exchanged between

the two parties. In some Polish parts of Upper Silesia the effigy,

representing an old woman, goes by the name of Marzana, the goddess of

death. It is made in the house where the last death occurred, and is

carried on a pole to the boundary of the village, where it is thrown into

a pond or burnt. At Polkwitz the custom of “Carrying out Death” fell into

abeyance; but an outbreak of fatal sickness which followed the

intermission of the ceremony induced the people to resume it.(642) Some of

the Moravians of Silesia make three puppets on this occasion: one

represents a man, another a bride, and the third a bridesmaid. The first

is carried by the boys, the two last by the girls. Formerly these effigies

were torn to pieces at a brook; now they are brought home again.(643) In

this last custom two of the figures are clearly conceived as bride and

bridegroom.

(M186) In Bohemia the children go out with a straw-man, representing

Death, to the end of the village, where they burn it, singing—

“_Now carry we Death out of the village,_

_The new Summer into the village,_

_Welcome, dear Summer,_

_Green little corn._”(644)

At Tabor in Bohemia the figure of Death is carried out of the town and

flung from a high rock into the water, while they sing—

“_Death swims on the water,_

_Summer will soon be here,_

_We carried Death away for you,_

_We brought the Summer._

_And do thou, O holy Marketa,_

_Give us a good year_

_For wheat and for rye._”(645)

In other parts of Bohemia they carry Death to the end of the village,

singing—

“_We carry Death out of the village,_

_And the New Year into the village._

_Dear Spring, we bid you welcome,_

_Green grass, we bid you welcome._”

Behind the village they erect a pyre, on which they burn the straw figure,

reviling and scoffing at it the while. Then they return, singing—

“_We have carried away Death,_

_And brought Life back._

_He has taken up his quarters in the village,_

_Therefore sing joyous songs._”(646)

(M187) In some German villages of Moravia, as in Jassnitz and Seitendorf,

the young folk assemble on the third Sunday in Lent and fashion a

straw-man, who is generally adorned with a fur cap and a pair of old

leathern hose, if such are to be had. The effigy is then hoisted on a pole

and carried by the lads and lasses out into the open fields. On the way

they sing a song, in which it is said that they are carrying Death away

and bringing dear Summer into the house, and with Summer the May and the

flowers. On reaching an appointed place they dance in a circle round the

effigy with loud shouts and screams, then suddenly rush at it and tear it

to pieces with their hands. Lastly, the pieces are thrown together in a

heap, the pole is broken, and fire is set to the whole. While it burns the

troop dances merrily round it, rejoicing at the victory won by Spring; and

when the fire has nearly died out they go to the householders to beg for a

present of eggs wherewith to hold a feast, taking care to give as a reason

for the request that they have carried Death out and away.(647)

(M188) The preceding evidence shews that the effigy of Death is often

regarded with fear and treated with marks of hatred and abhorrence. Thus

the anxiety of the villagers to transfer the figure from their own to

their neighbours’ land, and the reluctance of the latter to receive the

ominous guest, are proof enough of the dread which it inspires. Further,

in Lusatia and Silesia the puppet is sometimes made to look in at the

window of a house, and it is believed that some one in the house will die

within the year unless his life is redeemed by the payment of money.(648)

Again, after throwing the effigy away, the bearers sometimes run home lest

Death should follow them, and if one of them falls in running, it is

believed that he will die within the year.(649) At Chrudim, in Bohemia,

the figure of Death is made out of a cross, with a head and mask stuck at

the top, and a shirt stretched out on it. On the fifth Sunday in Lent the

boys take this effigy to the nearest brook or pool, and standing in a line

throw it into the water. Then they all plunge in after it; but as soon as

it is caught no one more may enter the water. The boy who did not enter

the water or entered it last will die within the year, and he is obliged

to carry the Death back to the village. The effigy is then burned.(650) On

the other hand, it is believed that no one will die within the year in the

house out of which the figure of Death has been carried;(651) and the

village out of which Death has been driven is sometimes supposed to be

protected against sickness and plague.(652) In some villages of Austrian

Silesia on the Saturday before Dead Sunday an effigy is made of old

clothes, hay, and straw, for the purpose of driving Death out of the

village. On Sunday the people, armed with sticks and straps, assemble

before the house where the figure is lodged. Four lads then draw the

effigy by cords through the village amid exultant shouts, while all the

others beat it with their sticks and straps. On reaching a field which

belongs to a neighbouring village they lay down the figure, cudgel it

soundly, and scatter the fragments over the field. The people believe that

the village from which Death has been thus carried out will be safe from

any infectious disease for the whole year.(653) In Slavonia the figure of

Death is cudgelled and then rent in two.(654) In Poland the effigy, made

of hemp and straw, is flung into a pool or swamp with the words “The devil

take thee.”(655)

§ 5. Sawing the Old Woman.

(M189) The custom of “Sawing the Old Woman,” which is or used to be

observed in Italy, France, and Spain on the fourth Sunday in Lent, is

doubtless, as Grimm supposes, merely another form of the custom of

“Carrying out Death.” A great hideous figure representing the oldest woman

of the village was dragged out and sawn in two, amid a prodigious noise

made with cow-bells, pots and pans, and so forth.(656) In Palermo the

representation used to be still more lifelike. At Mid-Lent an old woman

was drawn through the streets on a cart, attended by two men dressed in

the costume of the _Compagnia de’ Bianchi_, a society or religious order

whose function it was to attend and console prisoners condemned to death.

A scaffold was erected in a public square; the old woman mounted it, and

two mock executioners proceeded, amid a storm of huzzas and hand-clapping,

to saw through her neck, or rather through a bladder of blood which had

been previously fitted to it. The blood gushed out and the old woman

pretended to swoon and die. The last of these mock executions took place

in 1737.(657) In Florence, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,

the Old Woman was represented by a figure stuffed with walnuts and dried

figs and fastened to the top of a ladder. At Mid-Lent this effigy was sawn

through the middle under the _Loggie_ of the Mercato Nuovo, and as the

dried fruits tumbled out they were scrambled for by the crowd. A trace of

the custom is still to be seen in the practice, observed by urchins, of

secretly pinning paper ladders to the shoulders of women of the lower

classes who happen to shew themselves in the streets on the morning of

Mid-Lent.(658) A similar custom is observed by urchins in Rome; and at

Naples on the first of April boys cut strips of cloth into the shape of

saws, smear them with gypsum, and strike passers-by with their "saws" on

the back, thus imprinting the figure of a saw upon their clothes.(659) At

Montalto, in Calabria, boys go about at Mid-Lent with little saws made of

cane and jeer at old people, who therefore generally stay indoors on that

day. The Calabrian women meet together at this time and feast on figs,

chestnuts, honey, and so forth; this they call “Sawing the Old Woman”—a

reminiscence probably of a custom like the old Florentine one.(660) In

Lombardy the Thursday of Mid-Lent is known as the Day of the Old Wives

(_il giorno delle vecchie_). The children run about crying out for the

oldest woman, whom they wish to burn; and failing to possess themselves of

the original, they make a puppet representing her, which in the evening is

consumed on a bonfire. On the Lake of Garda the blaze of light flaring at

different points on the hills produces a picturesque effect.(661)

(M190) In Berry, a region of central France, the custom of “Sawing the Old

Woman” at Mid-Lent used to be popular, and has probably not wholly died

out even now. Here the name of “Fairs of the old Wives” was given to

certain fairs held in Lent, at which children were made to believe that

they would see the Old Woman of Mid-Lent split or sawn asunder. At

Argenton and Cluis-Dessus, when Mid-Lent has come, children of ten or

twelve years of age scour the streets with wooden swords, pursue the old

crones whom they meet, and even try to break into the houses where ancient

dames are known to live. Passers-by, who see the children thus engaged,

say, “They are going to cut or sabre the Old Woman.” Meantime the old

wives take care to keep out of sight as much as possible. When the

children of Cluis-Dessus have gone their rounds, and the day draws towards

evening, they repair to Cluis-Dessous, where they mould a rude figure of

an old woman out of clay, hew it in pieces with their wooden swords, and

throw the bits into the river. At Bourges on the same day, an effigy

representing an old woman was formerly sawn in two on the crier’s stone in

a public square. About the middle of the nineteenth century, in the same

town and on the same day, hundreds of children assembled at the Hospital

“to see the old woman split or divided in two.” A religious service was

held in the building on this occasion, which attracted many idlers. In the

streets it was not uncommon to hear cries of “Let us cleave the Old Wife!

let us cleave the oldest woman of the ward!” At Tulle, on the day of

Mid-Lent, the people used to enquire after the oldest woman in the town,

and to tell the children that at mid-day punctually she was to be sawn in

two at Puy-Saint-Clair.(662)

(M191) In Barcelona on the fourth Sunday in Lent boys run about the

streets, some with saws, others with billets of wood, others again with

cloths in which they collect gratuities. They sing a song in which it is

said that they are looking for the oldest woman of the city for the

purpose of sawing her in two in honour of Mid-Lent; at last, pretending to

have found her, they saw something in two and burn it. A like custom is

found amongst the South Slavs. In Lent the Croats tell their children that

at noon an old woman is being sawn in two outside the gates; and in

Carniola also the saying is current that at Mid-Lent an old woman is taken

out of the village and sawn in two. The North Slavonian expression for

keeping Mid-Lent is _bábu rezati_, that is, “sawing the Old Wife.”(663) In

the Graubünden Canton of Switzerland, on _Invocavit_ Sunday, grown people

used to assemble in the ale-house and there saw in two a straw puppet

which they called Mrs. Winter or the Ugly Woman (_bagorda_), while the

children in the streets teased each other with wooden saws.(664)

(M192) Among the gypsies of south-eastern Europe the custom of “sawing the

Old Woman in two” is observed in a very graphic form, not at Mid-Lent, but

on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. The Old Woman, represented by a puppet of

straw dressed in women’s clothes, is laid across a beam in some open place

and beaten with clubs by the assembled gypsies, after which it is sawn in

two by a young man and a maiden, both of whom wear a disguise. While the

effigy is being sawn through, the rest of the company dance round it

singing songs of various sorts. The remains of the figure are finally

burnt, and the ashes thrown into a stream. The ceremony is supposed by the

gypsies themselves to be observed in honour of a certain Shadow Queen;

hence Palm Sunday goes by the name Shadow Day among all the strolling

gypsies of eastern and southern Europe. According to the popular belief,

this Shadow Queen, of whom the gypsies of to-day have only a very vague

and confused conception, vanishes underground at the appearance of spring,

but comes forth again at the beginning of winter to plague mankind during

that inclement season with sickness, hunger, and death. Among the vagrant

gypsies of southern Hungary the effigy is regarded as an expiatory and

thank offering made to the Shadow Queen for having spared the people

during the winter. In Transylvania the gypsies who live in tents clothe

the puppet in the cast-off garments of the woman who has last become a

widow. The widow herself gives the clothes gladly for this purpose,

because she thinks that being burnt they will pass into the possession of

her departed husband, who will thus have no excuse for returning from the

spirit-land to visit her. The ashes are thrown by the Transylvanian

gypsies on the first graveyard that they pass on their journey.(665) In

this gypsy custom the equivalence of the effigy of the Old Woman to the

effigy of Death in the customs we have just been considering comes out

very clearly, thus strongly confirming the opinion of Grimm that the

practice of “sawing the Old Woman” is only another form of the practice of

“carrying out Death.”

(M193) The same perhaps may be said of a somewhat different form which the

custom assumes in parts of Spain and Italy. In Spain it is sometimes usual

on Ash Wednesday to fashion an effigy of stucco or pasteboard representing

a hideous old woman with seven legs, wearing a crown of sorrel and

spinach, and holding a sceptre in her hand. The seven skinny legs stand

for the seven weeks of the Lenten fast which begins on Ash Wednesday. This

monster, proclaimed Queen of Lent amid the chanting of lugubrious songs,

is carried in triumph through the crowded streets and public places. On

reaching the principal square the people put out their torches, cease

shouting, and disperse. Their revels are now ended, and they take a vow to

hold no more merry meetings until all the legs of the old woman have

fallen one by one and she has been beheaded. The effigy is then deposited

in some place appointed for the purpose, where the public is admitted to

see it during the whole of Lent. Every week, on Saturday evening, one of

the Queen’s legs is pulled off; and on Holy Saturday, when from every

church tower the joyous clangour of the bells proclaims the glad tidings

that Christ is risen, the mutilated body of the fallen Queen is carried

with great solemnity to the principal square and publicly beheaded.(666)

(M194) A custom of the same sort prevails in various parts of Italy. Thus

in the Abruzzi they hang a puppet of tow, representing Lent, to a cord,

which stretches across the street from one window to another. Seven

feathers are attached to the figure, and in its hand it grasps a distaff

and spindle. Every Saturday in Lent one of the seven feathers is plucked

out, and on Holy Saturday, while the bells are ringing, a string of

chestnuts is burnt for the purpose of sending Lent and its meagre fare to

the devil. In houses, too, it is usual to amuse children by cutting the

figure of an old woman with seven legs out of pasteboard and sticking it

beside the chimney. The old woman represents Lent, and her seven legs are

the seven weeks of the fast; every Saturday one of the legs is amputated.

At Mid-Lent the effigy is cut through the middle, and the part of which

the feet have been already amputated is removed. Sometimes the figure is

stuffed with sweets, dried fruits, and halfpence, for which the street

urchins scramble when the puppet is bisected.(667) In the Sorrentine

peninsula Lent is similarly represented by the effigy of a wrinkled old

hag with a spindle and distaff, which is fastened to a balcony or a

window. Attached to the figure is an orange with as many feathers stuck

into it as there are weeks in Lent, and at the end of each week one of the

feathers is plucked out. At Mid-Lent the puppet is sawn in two, an

operation which is sometimes attended by a gush of blood from a bladder

concealed in the interior of the figure. Any old women who shew themselves

in the streets on that day are exposed to jibes and jests, and may be

warned that they ought to remain at home.(668) At Castellammare, to the

south of Naples, an English lady observed a rude puppet dangling from a

string which spanned one of the narrow streets of the old town, being

fastened at either end, high overhead, to the upper part of the

many-storied houses. The puppet, about a foot long, was dressed all in

black, rather like a nun, and from the skirts projected five or six

feathers which bore a certain resemblance to legs. A peasant being asked

what these things meant, replied with Italian vagueness, “It is only

Lent.” Further enquiries, however, elicited the information that at the

end of every week in Lent one of the feather legs was pulled off the

puppet, and that the puppet was finally destroyed on the last day of

Lent.(669)

§ 6. Bringing in Summer.

(M195) In the preceding ceremonies the return of Spring, Summer, or Life,

as a sequel to the expulsion of Death, is only implied or at most

announced. In the following ceremonies it is plainly enacted. Thus in some

parts of Bohemia the effigy of Death is drowned by being thrown into the

water at sunset; then the girls go out into the wood and cut down a young

tree with a green crown, hang a doll dressed as a woman on it, deck the

whole with green, red, and white ribbons, and march in procession with

their _Líto_ (Summer) into the village, collecting gifts and singing—

“_Death swims in the water,_

_Spring comes to visit us,_

_With eggs that are red,_

_With yellow pancakes._

_We carried Death out of the village,_

_We are carrying Summer into the village._”(670)

In many Silesian villages the figure of Death, after being treated with

respect, is stript of its clothes and flung with curses into the water, or

torn to pieces in a field. Then the young folk repair to a wood, cut down

a small fir-tree, peel the trunk, and deck it with festoons of evergreens,

paper roses, painted egg-shells, motley bits of cloth, and so forth. The

tree thus adorned is called Summer or May. Boys carry it from house to

house singing appropriate songs and begging for presents. Among their

songs is the following:—

“_We have carried Death out,_

_We are bringing the dear Summer back,_

_The Summer and the May_

_And all the flowers gay._”

Sometimes they also bring back from the wood a prettily adorned figure,

which goes by the name of Summer, May, or the Bride; in the Polish

districts it is called Dziewanna, the goddess of spring.(671)

At Eisenach on the fourth Sunday in Lent young people used to fasten a

straw-man, representing Death, to a wheel, which they trundled to the top

of a hill. Then setting fire to the figure they allowed it and the wheel

to roll down the slope. Next they cut a tall fir-tree, tricked it out with

ribbons, and set it up in the plain. The men then climbed the tree to

fetch down the ribbons.(672) In Upper Lusatia the figure of Death, made of

straw and rags, is dressed in a veil furnished by the last bride and a

shirt provided by the house in which the last death took place. Thus

arrayed the figure is stuck on the end of a long pole and carried at full

speed by the tallest and strongest girl, while the rest pelt the effigy

with sticks and stones. Whoever hits it will be sure to live through the

year. In this way Death is carried out of the village and thrown into the

water or over the boundary of the next village. On their way home each one

breaks a green branch and carries it gaily with him till he reaches the

village, when he throws it away. Sometimes the young people of the next

village, upon whose land the figure has been thrown, run after them and

hurl it back, not wishing to have Death among them. Hence the two parties

occasionally come to blows.(673)

(M196) In these cases Death is represented by the puppet which is thrown

away, Summer or Life by the branches or trees which are brought back. But

sometimes a new potency of life seems to be attributed to the image of

Death itself, and by a kind of resurrection it becomes the instrument of

the general revival. Thus in some parts of Lusatia women alone are

concerned in carrying out Death, and suffer no male to meddle with it.

Attired in mourning, which they wear the whole day, they make a puppet of

straw, clothe it in a white shirt, and give it a broom in one hand and a

scythe in the other. Singing songs and pursued by urchins throwing stones,

they carry the puppet to the village boundary, where they tear it in

pieces. Then they cut down a fine tree, hang the shirt on it, and carry it

home singing.(674) On the Feast of Ascension the Saxons of Braller, a

village of Transylvania, not far from Hermannstadt, observe the ceremony

of “Carrying out Death” in the following manner. After morning service all

the school-girls repair to the house of one of their number, and there

dress up the Death. This is done by tying a threshed-out sheaf of corn

into a rough semblance of a head and body, while the arms are simulated by

a broomstick thrust through it horizontally. The figure is dressed in the

holiday attire of a young peasant woman, with a red hood, silver brooches,

and a profusion of ribbons at the arms and breast. The girls bustle at

their work, for soon the bells will be ringing to vespers, and the Death

must be ready in time to be placed at the open window, that all the people

may see it on their way to church. When vespers are over, the longed-for

moment has come for the first procession with the Death to begin; it is a

privilege that belongs to the school-girls alone. Two of the older girls

seize the figure by the arms and walk in front: all the rest follow two

and two. Boys may take no part in the procession, but they troop after it

gazing with open-mouthed admiration at the “beautiful Death.” So the

procession goes through all the streets of the village, the girls singing

the old hymn that begins—

“_Gott mein Vater, deine Liebe_

_Reicht so weit der Himmel ist,_”

to a tune that differs from the ordinary one. When the procession has

wound its way through every street, the girls go to another house, and

having shut the door against the eager prying crowd of boys who follow at

their heels, they strip the Death and pass the naked truss of straw out of

the window to the boys, who pounce on it, run out of the village with it

without singing, and fling the dilapidated effigy into the neighbouring

brook. This done, the second scene of the little drama begins. While the

boys were carrying away the Death out of the village, the girls remained

in the house, and one of them is now dressed in all the finery which had

been worn by the effigy. Thus arrayed she is led in procession through all

the streets to the singing of the same hymn as before. When the procession

is over they all betake themselves to the house of the girl who played the

leading part. Here a feast awaits them from which also the boys are

excluded. It is a popular belief that the children may safely begin to eat

gooseberries and other fruit after the day on which Death has thus been

carried out; for Death, which up to that time lurked especially in

gooseberries, is now destroyed. Further, they may now bathe with impunity

out of doors.(675) Very similar is the ceremony which, down to recent

years, was observed in some of the German villages of Moravia. Boys and

girls met on the afternoon of the first Sunday after Easter, and together

fashioned a puppet of straw to represent Death. Decked with

bright-coloured ribbons and cloths, and fastened to the top of a long

pole, the effigy was then borne with singing and clamour to the nearest

height, where it was stript of its gay attire and thrown or rolled down

the slope. One of the girls was next dressed in the gauds taken from the

effigy of Death, and with her at its head the procession moved back to the

village. In some villages the practice is to bury the effigy in the place

that has the most evil reputation of all the country-side: others throw it

into running water.(676)

(M197) In the Lusatian ceremony described above,(677) the tree which is

brought home after the destruction of the figure of Death is plainly

equivalent to the trees or branches which, in the preceding customs, were

brought back as representatives of Summer or Life, after Death had been

thrown away or destroyed. But the transference of the shirt worn by the

effigy of Death to the tree clearly indicates that the tree is a kind of

revivification, in a new form, of the destroyed effigy.(678) This comes

out also in the Transylvanian and Moravian customs: the dressing of a girl

in the clothes worn by the Death, and the leading her about the village to

the same song which had been sung when the Death was being carried about,

shew that she is intended to be a kind of resuscitation of the being whose

effigy has just been destroyed. These examples therefore suggest that the

Death whose demolition is represented in these ceremonies cannot be

regarded as the purely destructive agent which we understand by Death. If

the tree which is brought back as an embodiment of the reviving vegetation

of spring is clothed in the shirt worn by the Death which has just been

destroyed, the object certainly cannot be to check and counteract the

revival of vegetation: it can only be to foster and promote it. Therefore

the being which has just been destroyed—the so-called Death—must be

supposed to be endowed with a vivifying and quickening influence, which it

can communicate to the vegetable and even the animal world. This

ascription of a life-giving virtue to the figure of Death is put beyond a

doubt by the custom, observed in some places, of taking pieces of the

straw effigy of Death and placing them in the fields to make the crops

grow, or in the manger to make the cattle thrive. Thus in Spachendorf, a

village of Austrian Silesia, the figure of Death, made of straw,

brushwood, and rags, is carried with wild songs to an open place outside

the village and there burned, and while it is burning a general struggle

takes place for the pieces, which are pulled out of the flames with bare

hands. Each one who secures a fragment of the effigy ties it to a branch

of the largest tree in his garden, or buries it in his field, in the

belief that this causes the crops to grow better.(679) In the Troppau

district of Austrian Silesia the straw figure which the boys make on the

fourth Sunday in Lent is dressed by the girls in woman’s clothes and hung

with ribbons, necklace, and garlands. Attached to a long pole it is

carried out of the village, followed by a troop of young people of both

sexes, who alternately frolic, lament, and sing songs. Arrived at its

destination—a field outside the village—the figure is stripped of its

clothes and ornaments; then the crowd rushes at it and tears it to bits,

scuffling for the fragments. Every one tries to get a wisp of the straw of

which the effigy was made, because such a wisp, placed in the manger, is

believed to make the cattle thrive.(680) Or the straw is put in the hens’

nest, it being supposed that this prevents the hens from carrying away

their eggs, and makes them brood much better.(681) The same attribution of

a fertilising power to the figure of Death appears in the belief that if

the bearers of the figure, after throwing it away, beat cattle with their

sticks, this will render the beasts fat or prolific.(682) Perhaps the

sticks had been previously used to beat the Death,(683) and so had

acquired the fertilising power ascribed to the effigy. We have seen, too,

that at Leipsic a straw effigy of Death was shewn to young wives to make

them fruitful.(684)

(M198) It seems hardly possible to separate from the May-trees the trees

or branches which are brought into the village after the destruction of

the Death. The bearers who bring them in profess to be bringing in the

Summer,(685) therefore the trees obviously represent the Summer; indeed in

Silesia they are commonly called the Summer or the May,(686) and the doll

which is sometimes attached to the Summer-tree is a duplicate

representative of the Summer, just as the May is sometimes represented at

the same time by a May-tree and a May Lady.(687) Further, the Summer-trees

are adorned like May-trees with ribbons and so on; like May-trees, when

large, they are planted in the ground and climbed up; and like May-trees,

when small, they are carried from door to door by boys or girls singing

songs and collecting money.(688) And as if to demonstrate the identity of

the two sets of customs the bearers of the Summer-tree sometimes announce

that they are bringing in the Summer and the May.(689) The customs,

therefore, of bringing in the May and bringing in the Summer are

essentially the same; and the Summer-tree is merely another form of the

May-tree, the only distinction (besides that of name) being in the time at

which they are respectively brought in; for while the May-tree is usually

fetched in on the first of May or at Whitsuntide, the Summer-tree is

fetched in on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Therefore, if the May-tree is an

embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, the Summer-tree

must likewise be an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

But we have seen that the Summer-tree is in some cases a revivification of

the effigy of Death. It follows, therefore, that in these cases the effigy

called Death must be an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of

vegetation. This inference is confirmed, first, by the vivifying and

fertilising influence which the fragments of the effigy of Death are

believed to exercise both on vegetable and on animal life;(690) for this

influence, as we saw in the first part of this work,(691) is supposed to

be a special attribute of the tree-spirit. It is confirmed, secondly, by

observing that the effigy of Death is sometimes decked with leaves or made

of twigs, branches, hemp, or a threshed-out sheaf of corn;(692) and that

sometimes it is hung on a little tree and so carried about by girls

collecting money,(693) just as is done with the May-tree and the May Lady,

and with the Summer-tree and the doll attached to it. In short we are

driven to regard the expulsion of Death and the bringing in of Summer as,

in some cases at least, merely another form of that death and revival of

the spirit of vegetation in spring which we saw enacted in the killing and

resurrection of the Wild Man.(694) The burial and resurrection of the

Carnival is probably another way of expressing the same idea. The

interment of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap(695) is

natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilising

influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death. The Esthonians,

indeed, who carry the straw figure out of the village in the usual way on

Shrove Tuesday, do not call it the Carnival, but the Wood-spirit

(_Metsik_), and they clearly indicate the identity of the effigy with the

wood-spirit by fixing it to the top of a tree in the wood, where it

remains for a year, and is besought almost daily with prayers and

offerings to protect the herds; for like a true wood-spirit the _Metsik_

is a patron of cattle. Sometimes the _Metsik_ is made of sheaves of

corn.(696)

(M199) Thus we may fairly conjecture that the names Carnival, Death, and

Summer are comparatively late and inadequate expressions for the beings

personified or embodied in the customs with which we have been dealing.

The very abstractness of the names bespeaks a modern origin; for the

personification of times and seasons like the Carnival and Summer, or of

an abstract notion like death, is hardly primitive. But the ceremonies

themselves bear the stamp of a dateless antiquity; therefore we can hardly

help supposing that in their origin the ideas which they embodied were of

a more simple and concrete order. The notion of a tree, perhaps of a

particular kind of tree (for some savages have no word for tree in

general), or even of an individual tree, is sufficiently concrete to

supply a basis from which by a gradual process of generalisation the wider

idea of a spirit of vegetation might be reached. But this general idea of

vegetation would readily be confounded with the season in which it

manifests itself; hence the substitution of Spring, Summer, or May for the

tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation would be easy and natural. Again, the

concrete notion of the dying tree or dying vegetation would by a similar

process of generalisation glide into a notion of death in general; so that

the practice of carrying out the dying or dead vegetation in spring, as a

preliminary to its revival, would in time widen out into an attempt to

banish Death in general from the village or district. The view that in

these spring ceremonies Death meant originally the dying or dead

vegetation of winter has the high support of W. Mannhardt; and he confirms

it by the analogy of the name Death as applied to the spirit of the ripe

corn. Commonly the spirit of the ripe corn is conceived, not as dead, but

as old, and hence it goes by the name of the Old Man or the Old Woman. But

in some places the last sheaf cut at harvest, which is generally believed

to be the seat of the corn spirit, is called "the Dead One": children are

warned against entering the corn-fields because Death sits in the corn;

and, in a game played by Saxon children in Transylvania at the maize

harvest, Death is represented by a child completely covered with maize

leaves.(697)

§ 7. Battle of Summer and Winter.

(M200) Sometimes in the popular customs of the peasantry the contrast

between the dormant powers of vegetation in winter and their awakening

vitality in spring takes the form of a dramatic contest between actors who

play the parts respectively of Winter and Summer. Thus in the towns of

Sweden on May Day two troops of young men on horseback used to meet as if

for mortal combat. One of them was led by a representative of Winter clad

in furs, who threw snowballs and ice in order to prolong the cold weather.

The other troop was commanded by a representative of Summer covered with

fresh leaves and flowers. In the sham fight which followed the party of

Summer came off victorious, and the ceremony ended with a feast.(698)

Again, in the region of the middle Rhine, a representative of Summer clad

in ivy combats a representative of Winter clad in straw or moss and

finally gains a victory over him. The vanquished foe is thrown to the

ground and stripped of his casing of straw, which is torn to pieces and

scattered about, while the youthful comrades of the two champions sing a

song to commemorate the defeat of Winter by Summer. Afterwards they carry

about a summer garland or branch and collect gifts of eggs and bacon from

house to house. Sometimes the champion who acts the part of Summer is

dressed in leaves and flowers and wears a chaplet of flowers on his head.

In the Palatinate this mimic conflict takes place on the fourth Sunday in

Lent.(699) All over Bavaria the same drama used to be acted on the same

day, and it was still kept up in some places down to the middle of the

nineteenth century or later. While Summer appeared clad all in green,

decked with fluttering ribbons, and carrying a branch in blossom or a

little tree hung with apples and pears, Winter was muffled up in cap and

mantle of fur and bore in his hand a snow-shovel or a flail. Accompanied

by their respective retinues dressed in corresponding attire, they went

through all the streets of the village, halting before the houses and

singing staves of old songs, for which they received presents of bread,

eggs, and fruit. Finally, after a short struggle, Winter was beaten by

Summer and ducked in the village well or driven out of the village with

shouts and laughter into the forest.(700) In some parts of Bavaria the

boys who play the parts of Winter and Summer act their little drama in

every house that they visit, and engage in a war of words before they come

to blows, each of them vaunting the pleasures and benefits of the season

he represents and disparaging those of the other. The dialogue is in

verse. A few couplets may serve as specimens:—

SUMMER

“_Green, green are meadows wherever I pass_

_And the mowers are busy among the grass._”

WINTER

“_White, white are the meadows wherever I go,_

_And the sledges glide hissing across the snow._”

SUMMER

“_I’ll climb up the tree where the red cherries glow,_

_And Winter can stand by himself down below._”

WINTER

“_With you I will climb the cherry-tree tall,_

_Its branches will kindle the fire in the hall._”

SUMMER

“_O Winter, you are most uncivil_

_To send old women to the devil._”

WINTER

“_By that I make them warm and mellow,_

_So let them bawl and let them bellow._”

SUMMER

“_I am the Summer in white array,_

_I’m chasing the Winter far, far away._”

WINTER

“_I am the Winter in mantle of furs,_

_I’m chasing the Summer o’er bushes and burs._”

SUMMER

“_Just say a word more, and I’ll have you banned_

_At once and for ever from Summer land._”

WINTER

“_O Summer, for all your bluster and brag,_

_You’d not dare to carry a hen in a bag._”

SUMMER

“_O Winter, your chatter no more can I stay,_

_I’ll kick and I’ll cuff you without delay._”

Here ensues a scuffle between the two little boys, in which Summer gets

the best of it, and turns Winter out of the house. But soon the beaten

champion of Winter peeps in at the door and says with a humbled and

crestfallen air:—

“_O Summer, dear Summer, I’m under your ban,_

_For you are the master and I am the man._”

To which Summer replies:—

“_’Tis a capital notion, an excellent plan,_

_If I am the master and you are the man._

_So come, my dear Winter, and give me your hand,_

_We’ll travel together to Summer Land._”(701)

(M201) At Goepfritz in Lower Austria, two men personating Summer and

Winter used to go from house to house on Shrove Tuesday, and were

everywhere welcomed by the children with great delight. The representative

of Summer was clad in white and bore a sickle; his comrade, who played the

part of Winter, had a fur-cap on his head, his arms and legs were swathed

in straw, and he carried a flail. In every house they sang verses

alternately.(702) At Drömling in Brunswick, down to the present time, the

contest between Summer and Winter is acted every year at Whitsuntide by a

troop of boys and a troop of girls. The boys rush singing, shouting, and

ringing bells from house to house to drive Winter away; after them come

the girls singing softly and led by a May Bride, all in bright dresses and

decked with flowers and garlands to represent the genial advent of spring.

Formerly the part of Winter was played by a straw-man which the boys

carried with them; now it is acted by a real man in disguise.(703) In

Wachtl and Brodek, a German village and a little German town of Moravia,

encompassed by Slavonic people on every side, the great change that comes

over the earth in spring is still annually mimicked. The long village of

Wachtl, with its trim houses and farmyards, nestles in a valley surrounded

by pretty pine-woods. Here, on a day in spring, about the time of the

vernal equinox, an elderly man with a long flaxen beard may be seen going

from door to door. He is muffled in furs, with warm gloves on his hands

and a bearskin cap on his head, and he carries a threshing flail. This is

the personification of Winter. With him goes a younger beardless man

dressed in white, wearing a straw hat trimmed with gay ribbons on his

head, and carrying a decorated May-tree in his hands. This is Summer. At

every house they receive a friendly greeting and recite a long dialogue in

verse, Winter punctuating his discourse with his flail, which he brings

down with rude vigour on the backs of all within reach.(704) Amongst the

Slavonic population near Ungarisch Brod, in Moravia, the ceremony took a

somewhat different form. Girls dressed in green marched in procession

round a May-tree. Then two others, one in white and one in green, stepped

up to the tree and engaged in a dialogue. Finally, the girl in white was

driven away, but returned afterwards clothed in green, and the festival

ended with a dance.(705)

(M202) On May Day it used to be customary in almost all the large parishes

of the Isle of Man to choose from among the daughters of the wealthiest

farmers a young maiden to be Queen of May. She was dressed in the gayest

attire and attended by about twenty others, who were called maids of

honour. She had also a young man for her captain with a number of inferior

officers under him. In opposition to her was the Queen of Winter, a man

attired as a woman, with woollen hoods, fur tippets, and loaded with the

warmest and heaviest clothes, one upon another. Her attendants were

habited in like manner, and she too had a captain and troop for her

defence. Thus representing respectively the beauty of spring and the

deformity of winter they set forth from their different quarters, the one

preceded by the dulcet music of flutes and violins, the other by the harsh

clatter of cleavers and tongs. In this array they marched till they met on

a common, where the trains of the two mimic sovereigns engaged in a mock

battle. If the Queen of Winter’s forces got the better of their

adversaries and took her rival prisoner, the captive Queen of Summer was

ransomed for as much as would pay the expenses of the festival. After this

ceremony, Winter and her company retired and diverted themselves in a

barn, while the partisans of Summer danced on the green, concluding the

evening with a feast, at which the Queen and her maids sat at one table

and the captain and his troop at another. In later times the person of the

Queen of May was exempt from capture, but one of her slippers was

substituted and, if captured, had to be ransomed to defray the expenses of

the pageant. The procession of the Summer, which was subsequently composed

of little girls and called the Maceboard, outlived that of its rival the

Winter for some years; but both have now long been things of the

past.(706)

(M203) Among the central Esquimaux of North America the contest between

representatives of summer and winter, which in Europe has long degenerated

into a mere dramatic performance, is still kept up as a magical ceremony

of which the avowed intention is to influence the weather. In autumn, when

storms announce the approach of the dismal Arctic winter, the Esquimaux

divide themselves into two parties called respectively the ptarmigans and

the ducks, the ptarmigans comprising all persons born in winter, and the

ducks all persons born in summer. A long rope of sealskin is then

stretched out, and each party laying hold of one end of it seeks by

tugging with might and main to drag the other party over to its side. If

the ptarmigans get the worst of it, then summer has won the game and fine

weather may be expected to prevail through the winter.(707) In this

ceremony it is clearly assumed that persons born in summer have a natural

affinity with warm weather, and therefore possess a power of mitigating

the rigour of winter, whereas persons born in winter are, so to say, of a

cold and frosty disposition and can thereby exert a refrigerating

influence on the temperature of the air. In spite of this natural

antipathy between the representatives of summer and winter, we may be

allowed to conjecture that in the grand tug of war the ptarmigans do not

pull at the rope with the same hearty goodwill as the ducks, and that thus

the genial influence of summer commonly prevails over the harsh austerity

of winter. The Indians of Canada seem also to have imagined that persons

are endowed with distinct natural capacities according as they are born in

summer or winter, and they turned the distinction to account in much the

same fashion as the Esquimaux. When they wearied of the long frosts and

the deep snow which kept them prisoners in their huts and prevented them

from hunting, all of them who were born in summer rushed out of their

houses armed with burning brands and torches which they hurled against the

One who makes Winter; and this was supposed to produce the desired effect

of mitigating the cold. But those Indians who were born in winter

abstained from taking part in the ceremony, for they believed that if they

meddled with it the cold would increase instead of diminishing.(708) We

may surmise that in the corresponding European ceremonies, which have just

been described, it was formerly deemed necessary that the actors, who

played the parts of Winter and Summer, should have been born in the

seasons which they personated.

(M204) Every year on the Monday after the spring equinox boys and girls

attired in gay costume flock at a very early hour into Zurich from the

country. The girls, generally clad in white, are called _Mareielis_ and

carry two and two a small May tree or a wreath decked with flowers and

ribbons. Thus they go in bands from house to house, jingling the bells

which are attached to the wreath and singing a song, in which it is said

that the _Mareielis_ dance because the leaves and the grass are green and

everything is bursting into blossom. In this way they are supposed to

celebrate the triumph of Summer and to proclaim his coming. The boys are

called _Böggen_. They generally wear over their ordinary clothes a shirt

decked with many-coloured ribbons, tall pointed paper caps on their heads,

and masks before their faces. In this quaint costume they cart about

through the streets effigies made of straw and other combustible materials

which are supposed to represent Winter. At evening these effigies are

burned in various parts of the city.(709) The ceremony was witnessed at

Zurich on Monday, April 20th, 1903, by my friend Dr. J. Sutherland Black,

who has kindly furnished me with some notes on the subject. The effigy of

Winter was a gigantic figure composed in great part, as it seemed, of

cotton-wool. This was laid on a huge pyre, about thirty feet high, which

had been erected on the Stadthausplatz close to the lake. In presence of a

vast concourse of people fire was set to the pyre and all was soon in a

blaze, while the town bells rang a joyous peal. As the figure gradually

consumed in the flames, the mechanism enclosed in its interior produced a

variety of grotesque effects, such as the gushing forth of bowels. At last

nothing remained of the effigy but the iron backbone; the crowd slowly

dispersed, and the fire brigade set to work to quench the smouldering

embers.(710) In this ceremony the contest between Summer and Winter is

rather implied than expressed, but the significance of the rite is

unmistakable.

§ 8. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko.

(M205) In Russia funeral ceremonies like those of “Burying the Carnival”

and “Carrying out Death” are celebrated under the names, not of Death or

the Carnival, but of certain mythic figures, Kostrubonko, Kostroma,

Kupalo, Lada, and Yarilo. These Russian ceremonies are observed both in

spring and at midsummer. Thus “in Little Russia it used to be the custom

at Eastertide to celebrate the funeral of a being called Kostrubonko, the

deity of the spring. A circle was formed of singers who moved slowly

around a girl who lay on the ground as if dead, and as they went they

sang,—

‘_Dead, dead is our Kostrubonko!_

_Dead, dead is our dear one!_’

until the girl suddenly sprang up, on which the chorus joyfully

exclaimed,—

‘_Come to life, come to life has our Kostrubonko!_

_Come to life, come to life has our dear one!_’ ”(711)

On the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve) a figure of Kupalo is made of straw

and “is dressed in woman’s clothes, with a necklace and a floral crown.

Then a tree is felled, and, after being decked with ribbons, is set up on

some chosen spot. Near this tree, to which they give the name of Marena

[Winter or Death], the straw figure is placed, together with a table, on

which stand spirits and viands. Afterwards a bonfire is lit, and the young

men and maidens jump over it in couples, carrying the figure with them. On

the next day they strip the tree and the figure of their ornaments, and

throw them both into a stream.”(712) On St. Peter’s Day, the twenty-ninth

of June, or on the following Sunday, “the Funeral of Kostroma” or of Lada

or of Yarilo is celebrated in Russia. In the Governments of Penza and

Simbirsk the funeral used to be represented as follows. A bonfire was

kindled on the twenty-eighth of June, and on the next day the maidens

chose one of their number to play the part of Kostroma. Her companions

saluted her with deep obeisances, placed her on a board, and carried her

to the bank of a stream. There they bathed her in the water, while the

oldest girl made a basket of lime-tree bark and beat it like a drum. Then

they returned to the village and ended the day with processions, games,

and dances.(713) In the Murom district Kostroma was represented by a straw

figure dressed in woman’s clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough

and carried with songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd

divided into two sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended

the figure. At last the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of

its dress and ornaments, tore it in pieces, trod the straw of which it was

made under foot, and flung it into the stream; while the defenders of the

figure hid their faces in their hands and pretended to bewail the death of

Kostroma.(714) In the district of Kostroma the burial of Yarilo was

celebrated on the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of June. The people chose an

old man and gave him a small coffin containing a Priapus-like figure

representing Yarilo. This he carried out of the town, followed by women

chanting dirges and expressing by their gestures grief and despair. In the

open fields a grave was dug, and into it the figure was lowered amid

weeping and wailing, after which games and dances were begun, “calling to

mind the funeral games celebrated in old times by the pagan

Slavonians.”(715) In Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a

coffin and carried through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken

women, who kept repeating mournfully, “He is dead! he is dead!” The men

lifted and shook the figure as if they were trying to recall the dead man

to life. Then they said to the women, “Women, weep not. I know what is

sweeter than honey.” But the women continued to lament and chant, as they

do at funerals. “Of what was he guilty? He was so good. He will arise no

more. O how shall we part from thee? What is life without thee? Arise, if

only for a brief hour. But he rises not, he rises not.” At last the Yarilo

was buried in a grave.(716)

§ 9. Death and Revival of Vegetation.

(M206) These Russian customs are plainly of the same nature as those which

in Austria and Germany are known as “Carrying out Death.” Therefore if the

interpretation here adopted of the latter is right, the Russian

Kostrubonko, Yarilo, and the rest must also have been originally

embodiments of the spirit of vegetation, and their death must have been

regarded as a necessary preliminary to their revival. The revival as a

sequel to the death is enacted in the first of the ceremonies described,

the death and resurrection of Kostrubonko. The reason why in some of these

Russian ceremonies the death of the spirit of vegetation is celebrated at

midsummer may be that the decline of summer is dated from Midsummer Day,

after which the days begin to shorten, and the sun sets out on his

downward journey—

“_To the darksome hollows_

_Where the frosts of winter lie._”

Such a turning-point of the year, when vegetation might be thought to

share the incipient though still almost imperceptible decay of summer,

might very well be chosen by primitive man as a fit moment for resorting

to those magic rites by which he hopes to stay the decline, or at least to

ensure the revival, of plant life.

(M207) But while the death of vegetation appears to have been represented

in all, and its revival in some, of these spring and midsummer ceremonies,

there are features in some of them which can hardly be explained on this

hypothesis alone. The solemn funeral, the lamentations, and the mourning

attire, which often characterise these rites, are indeed appropriate at

the death of the beneficent spirit of vegetation. But what shall we say of

the glee with which the effigy is often carried out, of the sticks and

stones with which it is assailed, and the taunts and curses which are

hurled at it? What shall we say of the dread of the effigy evinced by the

haste with which the bearers scamper home as soon as they have thrown it

away, and by the belief that some one must soon die in any house into

which it has looked? This dread might perhaps be explained by a belief

that there is a certain infectiousness in the dead spirit of vegetation

which renders its approach dangerous. But this explanation, besides being

rather strained, does not cover the rejoicings which often attend the

carrying out of Death. We must therefore recognise two distinct and

seemingly opposite features in these ceremonies: on the one hand, sorrow

for the death, and affection and respect for the dead; on the other hand,

fear and hatred of the dead, and rejoicings at his death. How the former

of these features is to be explained I have attempted to shew: how the

latter came to be so closely associated with the former is a question

which I shall try to answer in the sequel.

(M208) Before we quit these European customs to go farther afield, it will

be well to notice that occasionally the expulsion of Death or of a mythic

being is conducted without any visible representative of the personage

expelled. Thus at Königshain, near Görlitz in Silesia, all the villagers,

young and old, used to go out with straw torches to the top of a

neighbouring hill, called _Todtenstein_ (Death-stone), where they lit

their torches, and so returned home singing, “We have driven out Death, we

are bringing back Summer.”(717) In Albania young people light torches of

resinous wood on Easter Eve, and march in procession through the village

brandishing them. At last they throw the torches into the river, saying,

“Ha, Kore, we fling you into the river, like these torches, that you may

return no more.” Some say that the intention of the ceremony is to drive

out winter; but Kore is conceived as a malignant being who devours

children.(718)

§ 10. Analogous Rites in India.

(M209) In the Kanagra district of India there is a custom observed by

young girls in spring which closely resembles some of the European spring

ceremonies just described. It is called the _Ralî Ka melâ_, or fair of

Ralî, the _Ralî_ being a small painted earthen image of Siva or Pârvatî.

The custom is in vogue all over the Kanagra district, and its celebration,

which is entirely confined to young girls, lasts through most of Chet

(March-April) up to the Sankrânt of Baisâkh (April). On a morning in March

all the young girls of the village take small baskets of _dûb_ grass and

flowers to an appointed place, where they throw them in a heap. Round this

heap they stand in a circle and sing. This goes on every day for ten days,

till the heap of grass and flowers has reached a fair height. Then they

cut in the jungle two branches, each with three prongs at one end, and

place them, prongs downwards, over the heap of flowers, so as to make two

tripods or pyramids. On the single uppermost points of these branches they

get an image-maker to construct two clay images, one to represent Siva,

and the other Pârvatî. The girls then divide themselves into two parties,

one for Siva and one for Pârvatî, and marry the images in the usual way,

leaving out no part of the ceremony. After the marriage they have a feast,

the cost of which is defrayed by contributions solicited from their

parents. Then at the next Sankrânt (Baisâkh) they all go together to the

river-side, throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place, as

though they were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the

neighbourhood often tease them by diving after the images, bringing them

up, and waving them about while the girls are crying over them. The object

of the fair is said to be to secure a good husband.(719)

(M210) That in this Indian ceremony the deities Siva and Pârvatî are

conceived as spirits of vegetation seems to be proved by the placing of

their images on branches over a heap of grass and flowers. Here, as often

in European folk-custom, the divinities of vegetation are represented in

duplicate, by plants and by puppets. The marriage of these Indian deities

in spring corresponds to the European ceremonies in which the marriage of

the vernal spirits of vegetation is represented by the King and Queen of

May, the May Bride, Bridegroom of the May, and so forth.(720) The throwing

of the images into the water, and the mourning for them, are the

equivalents of the European customs of throwing the dead spirit of

vegetation under the name of Death, Yarilo, Kostroma, and the rest, into

the water and lamenting over it. Again, in India, as often in Europe, the

rite is performed exclusively by females. The notion that the ceremony

helps to procure husbands for the girls can be explained by the quickening

and fertilising influence which the spirit of vegetation is believed to

exert upon the life of man as well as of plants.(721)

§ 11. The Magic Spring.

(M211) The general explanation which we have been led to adopt of these

and many similar ceremonies is that they are, or were in their origin,

magical rites intended to ensure the revival of nature in spring. The

means by which they were supposed to effect this end were imitation and

sympathy. Led astray by his ignorance of the true causes of things,

primitive man believed that in order to produce the great phenomena of

nature on which his life depended he had only to imitate them, and that

immediately by a secret sympathy or mystic influence the little drama

which he acted in forest glade or mountain dell, on desert plain or

wind-swept shore, would be taken up and repeated by mightier actors on a

vaster stage. He fancied that by masquerading in leaves and flowers he

helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing

the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made

smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. If we find it hard

to throw ourselves even in fancy into a mental condition in which such

things seem possible, we can more easily picture to ourselves the anxiety

which the savage, when he first began to lift his thoughts above the

satisfaction of his merely animal wants, and to meditate on the causes of

things, may have felt as to the continued operation of what we now call

the laws of nature. To us, familiar as we are with the conception of the

uniformity and regularity with which the great cosmic phenomena succeed

each other, there seems little ground for apprehension that the causes

which produce these effects will cease to operate, at least within the

near future. But this confidence in the stability of nature is bred only

by the experience which comes of wide observation and long tradition; and

the savage, with his narrow sphere of observation and his short-lived

tradition, lacks the very elements of that experience which alone could

set his mind at rest in face of the ever-changing and often menacing

aspects of nature. No wonder, therefore, that he is thrown into a panic by

an eclipse, and thinks that the sun or the moon would surely perish, if he

did not raise a clamour and shoot his puny shafts into the air to defend

the luminaries from the monster who threatens to devour them. No wonder he

is terrified when in the darkness of night a streak of sky is suddenly

illumined by the flash of a meteor, or the whole expanse of the celestial

arch glows with the fitful light of the Northern Streamers.(722) Even

phenomena which recur at fixed and uniform intervals may be viewed by him

with apprehension, before he has come to recognise the orderliness of

their recurrence. The speed or slowness of his recognition of such

periodic or cyclic changes in nature will depend largely on the length of

the particular cycle. The cycle, for example, of day and night is

everywhere, except in the polar regions, so short and hence so frequent

that men probably soon ceased to discompose themselves seriously as to the

chance of its failing to recur, though the ancient Egyptians, as we have

seen, daily wrought enchantments to bring back to the east in the morning

the fiery orb which had sunk at evening in the crimson west. But it was

far otherwise with the annual cycle of the seasons. To any man a year is a

considerable period, seeing that the number of our years is but few at the

best. To the primitive savage, with his short memory and imperfect means

of marking the flight of time, a year may well have been so long that he

failed to recognise it as a cycle at all, and watched the changing aspects

of earth and heaven with a perpetual wonder, alternately delighted and

alarmed, elated and cast down, according as the vicissitudes of light and

heat, of plant and animal life, ministered to his comfort or threatened

his existence. In autumn when the withered leaves were whirled about the

forest by the nipping blast, and he looked up at the bare boughs, could he

feel sure that they would ever be green again? As day by day the sun sank

lower and lower in the sky, could he be certain that the luminary would

ever retrace his heavenly road? Even the waning moon, whose pale sickle

rose thinner and thinner every night over the rim of the eastern horizon,

may have excited in his mind a fear lest, when it had wholly vanished,

there should be moons no more.

(M212) These and a thousand such misgivings may have thronged the fancy

and troubled the peace of the man who first began to reflect on the

mysteries of the world he lived in, and to take thought for a more distant

future than the morrow. It was natural, therefore, that with such thoughts

and fears he should have done all that in him lay to bring back the faded

blossom to the bough, to swing the low sun of winter up to his old place

in the summer sky, and to restore its orbed fulness to the silver lamp of

the waning moon. We may smile at his vain endeavours if we please, but it

was only by making a long series of experiments, of which some were almost

inevitably doomed to failure, that man learned from experience the

futility of some of his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others.

After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have

failed and which continue to be repeated merely because, for reasons which

have already been indicated,(723) the operator is unaware of their

failure. With the advance of knowledge these ceremonies either cease to be

performed altogether or are kept up from force of habit long after the

intention with which they were instituted has been forgotten. Thus fallen

from their high estate, no longer regarded as solemn rites on the punctual

performance of which the welfare and even the life of the community

depend, they sink gradually to the level of simple pageants, mummeries,

and pastimes, till in the final stage of degeneration they are wholly

abandoned by older people, and, from having once been the most serious

occupation of the sage, become at last the idle sport of children. It is

in this final stage of decay that most of the old magical rites of our

European forefathers linger on at the present day, and even from this

their last retreat they are fast being swept away by the rising tide of

those multitudinous forces, moral, intellectual, and social, which are

bearing mankind onward to a new and unknown goal. We may feel some natural

regret at the disappearance of quaint customs and picturesque ceremonies,

which have preserved to an age often deemed dull and prosaic something of

the flavour and freshness of the olden time, some breath of the springtime

of the world; yet our regret will be lessened when we remember that these

pretty pageants, these now innocent diversions, had their origin in

ignorance and superstition; that if they are a record of human endeavour,

they are also a monument of fruitless ingenuity, of wasted labour, and of

blighted hopes; and that for all their gay trappings—their flowers, their

ribbons, and their music—they partake far more of tragedy than of farce.

(M213) The interpretation which, following in the footsteps of W.

Mannhardt, I have attempted to give of these ceremonies has been not a

little confirmed by the discovery, made since this book was first written,

that the natives of Central Australia regularly practise magical

ceremonies for the purpose of awakening the dormant energies of nature at

the approach of what may be called the Australian spring. Nowhere

apparently are the alternations of the seasons more sudden and the

contrasts between them more striking than in the deserts of Central

Australia, where at the end of a long period of drought the sandy and

stony wilderness, over which the silence and desolation of death appear to

brood, is suddenly, after a few days of torrential rain, transformed into

a landscape smiling with verdure and peopled with teeming multitudes of

insects and lizards, of frogs and birds. The marvellous change which

passes over the face of nature at such times has been compared even by

European observers to the effect of magic;(724) no wonder, then, that the

savage should regard it as such in very deed. Now it is just when there is

promise of the approach of a good season that the natives of Central

Australia are wont especially to perform those magical ceremonies of which

the avowed intention is to multiply the plants and animals they use as

food.(725) These ceremonies, therefore, present a close analogy to the

spring customs of our European peasantry not only in the time of their

celebration, but also in their aim; for we can hardly doubt that in

instituting rites designed to assist the revival of plant life in spring

our primitive forefathers were moved, not by any sentimental wish to smell

at early violets, or pluck the rathe primrose, or watch yellow daffodils

dancing in the breeze, but by the very practical consideration, certainly

not formulated in abstract terms, that the life of man is inextricably

bound up with that of plants, and that if they were to perish he could not

survive. And as the faith of the Australian savage in the efficacy of his

magic rites is confirmed by observing that their performance is invariably

followed, sooner or later, by that increase of vegetable and animal life

which it is their object to produce, so, we may suppose, it was with

European savages in the olden time. The sight of the fresh green in brake

and thicket, of vernal flowers blowing on mossy banks, of swallows

arriving from the south, and of the sun mounting daily higher in the sky,

would be welcomed by them as so many visible signs that their enchantments

were indeed taking effect, and would inspire them with a cheerful

confidence that all was well with a world which they could thus mould to

suit their wishes. Only in autumn days, as summer slowly faded, would

their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings at symptoms of

decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off for ever

the approach of winter and of death.

NOTE A. CHINESE INDIFFERENCE TO DEATH.

(M214) Lord Avebury kindly allows me to print the letter of Mr. M. W.

Lampson, referred to above (p. 146, note 1). It runs as follows:—

FOREIGN OFFICE, _August 7, 1903_.

DEAR LORD AVEBURY—As the result of enquiries I hear from a Mr.

Eames, a lawyer who practised for some years at Shanghai and has

considerable knowledge of Chinese matters, that for a small sum a

substitute can be found for execution. This is recognised by the

Chinese authorities, with certain exceptions, as for instance

parricide. It is even asserted that the local Taotai gains

pecuniarily by this arrangement, as he is as a rule not above

obtaining a substitute for the condemned man for a less sum than

was paid him by the latter.

It is, I believe, part of the doctrine of Confucius that it is one

of the highest virtues to increase the family prosperity at the

expense of personal suffering. According to Eames, the Chinamen

[_sic_] looks upon execution in another man’s stead in this light,

and consequently there is quite a competition for such a

“substitution.”

Should you wish to get more definite information, the address is:

W. Eames, Esq., c/o Norman Craig, Inner Temple, E.C.

The only man in this department who has actually been out to China

is at present away. But on his return I will ask him about it.—

Yours sincerely,

MILES W. LAMPSON.

(M215) On this subject Lord Avebury had stated: “It is said that in China,

if a rich man is condemned to death, he can sometimes purchase a willing

substitute at a very small expense.”(726) In regard to his authority for

this statement Lord Avebury wrote to me (August 10, 1903): “I believe my

previous information came from Sir T. Wade, but I have been unable to lay

my hand on his letter, and do not therefore like to state it as a fact.”

Sir Thomas Wade was English Ambassador at Peking, and afterwards Professor

of Chinese at Cambridge.

(M216) On the same subject Mr. Valentine Chirol, editor of the foreign

department of _The Times_, wrote to me as follows:—

QUEEN ANNE’S MANSIONS, WESTMINSTER, S.W.,

_August 21st, 1905_.

DEAR SIR—I shall be very glad to do what I can to obtain for you

the information you require. It was a surprise to me to hear that

the accuracy of the statement was called in question. It is

certainly a matter of common report in China that the practice

exists. The difficulty, I conceive, will be to obtain evidence

enabling one to quote concrete cases. My own impression is that

the practice is quite justifiable according to Chinese ethics when

life is given up from motives of filial piety, that is to say in

order to relieve the wants of indigent parents, or to defray the

costs of ancestral rights [_sic_]. Your general thesis that life

is less valued and more readily sacrificed by some races than by

modern Europeans seems to be beyond dispute. Surely the Japanese

practice of _sepuku_, or _harikari_, as it is vulgarly called, is

a case in point. Life is risked, as in duelling, by Europeans, for

the mere point of honour, but it is never deliberately laid down

in satisfaction of the exigencies of the social code. I will send

you whatever information I can obtain when it reaches me, but that

will not of course be for some months.—Yours truly,

VALENTINE CHIROL.

_P.S._—A friend of mine who has just been here entirely confirms

my own belief as to the accuracy of your statement, and tells me

he has himself seen several Imperial Decrees in the _Peking

Gazette_, calling provincial authorities to order for having

allowed specific cases of substitution to occur, and ordering the

death penalty to be carried out in a more severe form on the

original culprits as an extra punishment for obtaining

substitutes. He has promised to look up some of these Impe.

Decrees on his return to China, and send me translations. I am

satisfied personally that his statement is conclusive.

V. C.

On the same subject I have received the following letter from Mr. J. O. P.

Bland, for fourteen years correspondent of _The Times_ in China:—

THE CLOCK HOUSE, SHEPPERTON,

_March 22nd, 1911_.

DEAR PROFESSOR FRAZER—My friend Mr. Valentine Chirol, writing the

other day from Crete on his way East, asked me to communicate with

you on the subject of your letter of the 3rd ulto., namely, the

custom, alleged to exist in China, of procuring substitutes for

persons condemned to death, the substitutes’ families or relatives

receiving compensation in cash.

To speak of this as a custom is to exaggerate the frequency of a

class of incident which has undoubtedly been recorded in China and

of which there has been mention in Imperial Decrees. I am sorry to

say that I have not my file of the _Peking Gazette_ here, for

immediate reference, but I am writing to my friend Mr. Backhouse

in Peking, and have no doubt but that he will be able to give

chapter and verse of instances thus recorded. I had expected to

find cases of the kind recorded in Mr. Werner’s recently-published

“Descriptive Sociology” of the Chinese (Spencerian publications),

but have not been able to do so in the absence of an index to that

voluminous work. More than one of the authors whom he quotes have

certainly referred to cases of substitution for death-sentence

prisoners. Parker, for instance (“China Past and Present,” page

378), asserts that substitutes were to be had in Canton at the

reasonable price of fifty taels (say £10). Dr. Matignon (in

“Superstition, Crime et Misère en Chine,” page 113) says that

filial piety is a frequent motive. The negative opinion of

Professors Giles and de Groot is entitled to consideration, but

cannot be regarded as any more conclusive than the views expressed

by Professor Giles on the question of infanticide which are

outweighed by a mass of direct proof of eye-witnesses.

In a country where men submit voluntarily to mutilation and grave

risk of death for a comparatively small gain to themselves and

their relatives, where women commit suicide in hundreds to escape

capture by invaders or strangers, where men and women alike

habitually sacrifice their life for the most trivial motives of

revenge or distress, it need not greatly surprise us that some

should be found, especially among the wretchedly poor class,

willing to give up their life in order to relieve their families

of want or otherwise to “acquire merit.”

The most important thing, I think, in expressing any opinion about

the Chinese, is to remember the great extent and heterogeneous

elements of the country, and to abstain from any sweeping

generalisations based on isolated acts or events.—Yours very

truly,

J. O. P. BLAND.

As the practice in question involves a grave miscarriage of justice, the

discovery of which might entail serious consequences on the magistrate who

connived at it, we need not wonder that it is generally hushed up, and

that no instances of it should come to the ears of many Europeans resident

in China. My friend Professor H. A. Giles of Cambridge in conversation

expressed himself quite incredulous on the subject, and Professor J. J. M.

de Groot of Leyden wrote to me (January 31, 1902) to the same effect. The

Rev. Dr. W. T. A. Barber, Headmaster of the Leys School, Cambridge, and

formerly a missionary in China, wrote to me (January 30, 1902): “As to the

possibility that a man condemned to death may secure a substitute on

payment of a moderate sum of money, we used to hear that this was the

case; but I have no proof that would justify you in using the fact.”

Another experienced missionary, the Rev. W. A. Cornaby, wrote to Dr.

Barber: “I have heard of no such custom in capital crimes. The man in

whose house a fire starts may, and often does, pay another to receive the

blows and three days in a cangue. But unless where ‘foreign riots’ were

the case, and a previously condemned criminal handy, I should hardly think

it possible. Every precaution is taken that no one is beheaded but the man

who cannot possibly be let off. The expense on the county mandarin is over

£100 in ‘stationery expenses’ with higher courts.” On this I would observe

that if every execution costs the local mandarin so dear, he must be under

a strong temptation to get the expenses out of the prisoner whenever he

can do so without being detected.

(M217) With regard to the custom, mentioned by Mr. Cornaby, of procuring

substitutes for corporal punishment, we are told that in China there are

men who earn a livelihood by being thrashed instead of the real culprits.

But they bribe the executioner to lay on lightly; otherwise their

constitution could not long resist the tear and wear of so exhausting a

profession.(727) Thus the theory and practice of vicarious suffering are

well understood in China.

NOTE B. SWINGING AS A MAGICAL RITE.

(M218) The custom of swinging has been practised as a religious or rather

magical rite in various parts of the world, but it does not seem possible

to explain all the instances of it in the same way. People appear to have

resorted to the practice from different motives and with different ideas

of the benefit to be derived from it. In the text we have seen that the

Letts, and perhaps the Siamese, swing to make the crops grow tall.(728)

The same may be the intention of the ceremony whenever it is specially

observed at harvest festivals. Among the Buginese and Macassars of

Celebes, for example, it used to be the custom for young girls to swing

one after the other on these occasions.(729) At the great Dassera festival

of Nepaul, which immediately precedes the cutting of the rice, swings and

kites come into fashion among the young people of both sexes. The swings

are sometimes hung from boughs of trees, but generally from a cross-beam

supported on a framework of tall bamboos.(730) Among the Dyaks of Sarawak

a feast is held at the end of harvest, when the soul of the rice is

secured to prevent the crops from rotting away. On this occasion a number

of old women rock to and fro on a rude swing suspended from the

rafters.(731) A traveller in Sarawak has described how he saw many tall

swings erected and Dyaks swinging to and fro on them, sometimes ten or

twelve men together on one swing, while they chanted in monotonous,

dirge-like tones an invocation to the spirits that they would be pleased

to grant a plentiful harvest of sago and fruit and a good fishing

season.(732)

(M219) In the East Indian island of Bengkali elaborate and costly

ceremonies are performed to ensure a good catch of fish. Among the rest an

hereditary priestess, who bears the royal title of Djindjang Rajah, works

herself up by means of the fumes of incense and so forth into that state

of mental disorder which with many people passes for a symptom of divine

inspiration. In this pious frame of mind she is led by her four handmaids

to a swing all covered with yellow and hung with golden bells, on which

she takes her seat amid the jingle of the bells. As she rocks gently to

and fro in the swing, she speaks in an unknown tongue to each of the

sixteen spirits who have to do with the fishing.(733) In order to procure

a plentiful supply of game the Tinneh Indians of North-West America

perform a magical ceremony which they call “the young man bounding or

tied.” They pinion a man tightly, and having hung him by the head and

heels from the roof of the hut, rock him backwards and forwards.(734)

(M220) Thus we see that people swing in order to procure a plentiful

supply of fish and game as well as good crops. In such cases the notion

seems to be that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether in the vegetable

or the animal kingdom; though why it should be supposed to do so, I

confess myself unable to explain. There seem to be some reasons for

thinking that the Indian rite of swinging on hooks run through the flesh

of the performer is also resorted to, at least in some cases, from a

belief in its fertilising virtue. Thus Hamilton tells us that at Karwar,

on the west coast of India, a feast is held at the end of May or beginning

of June in honour of the infernal gods, “with a divination or conjuration

to know the fate of the ensuing crop of corn.” Men were hung from a pole

by means of tenter-hooks inserted in the flesh of their backs; and the

pole with the men dangling from it was then dragged for more than a mile

over ploughed ground from one sacred grove to another, preceded by a young

girl who carried a pot of fire on her head. When the second grove was

reached, the men were let down and taken off the hooks, and the girl fell

into the usual prophetic frenzy, after which she unfolded to the priests

the revelation with which she had just been favoured by the terrestrial

gods. In each of the groves a shapeless black stone, daubed with red lead

to stand for a mouth, eyes, and ears, appears to have represented the

indwelling divinity.(735) Sometimes this custom of swinging on hooks,

which is known among the Hindoos as _Churuk Puja_, seems to be intended to

propitiate demons. Some Santals asked Mr. V. Ball to be allowed to perform

it because their women and children were dying of sickness, and their

cattle were being killed by wild beasts; they believed that these

misfortunes befell them because the evil spirits had not been

appeased.(736) These same Santals celebrate a swinging festival of a less

barbarous sort about the month of February. Eight men sit in chairs and

rotate round posts in a sort of revolving swing, like the merry-go-rounds

which are so dear to children at English fairs.(737) At the Nauroz and Eed

festivals in Dardistan the women swing on ropes suspended from trees.(738)

During the rainy season in Behar young women swing in their houses, while

they sing songs appropriate to the season. The period during which they

indulge in this pastime, if a mere pastime it be, is strictly limited; it

begins with a festival which usually falls on the twenty-fifth of the

month Jeyt and ends with another festival which commonly takes place on

the twenty-fifth of the month Asin. No one would think of swinging at any

other time of the year.(739) It is possible that this last custom may be

nothing more than a pastime meant to while away some of the tedious hours

of the inclement season; but its limitation to a certain clearly-defined

portion of the year seems rather to point to a religious or magical

origin. Possibly the intention may once have been to drive away the rain.

We shall see immediately that swinging is sometimes resorted to for the

purpose of expelling the powers of evil. About the middle of March the

Hindoos observe a swinging festival of a different sort in honour of the

god Krishna, whose image is placed in the seat or cradle of a swing and

then, just when the dawn is breaking, rocked gently to and fro several

times. The same ceremony is repeated at noon and at sunset.(740) In the

Rigveda the sun is called, by a natural metaphor, “the golden swing in the

sky,” and the expression helps us to understand a ceremony of Vedic India.

A priest sat in a swing and touched with the span of his right hand at

once the seat of the swing and the ground. In doing so he said, “The great

lord has united himself with the great lady, the god has united himself

with the goddess.” Perhaps he meant to indicate in a graphic way that the

sun had reached that lowest point of its course where it was nearest to

the earth.(741) In this connexion it is of interest to note that in the

Esthonian celebration of St. John’s Day or the summer solstice swings

play, along with bonfires, the most prominent part. Girls sit and swing

the whole night through, singing old songs to explain why they do so. For

legend tells of an Esthonian prince who wooed and won an Islandic

princess. But a wicked enchanter spirited away the lover to a desert

island, where he languished in captivity, till his lady-love contrived to

break the magic spell that bound him. Together they sailed home to

Esthonia, which they reached on St. John’s Day, and burnt their ship,

resolved to stray no longer in far foreign lands. The swings in which the

Esthonian maidens still rock themselves on St. John’s Day are said to

recall the ship in which the lovers tossed upon the stormy sea, and the

bonfires commemorate the burning of it. When the fires have died out, the

swings are laid aside and never used again either in the village or at the

solitary alehouse until spring comes round once more.(742) Here it is

natural to connect both swings and bonfires with the apparent course of

the sun, who reaches the highest and turning point of his orbit on St.

John’s Day. Bonfires and swings perhaps were originally charms intended to

kindle and speed afresh on its heavenly road “the golden swing in the

sky.” Among the Letts of South Livonia and Curland the summer solstice is

the occasion of a great festival of flowers, at which the people sing

songs with the constant refrain of _lihgo, lihgo_. It has been proposed to

derive the word _lihgo_ from the Lettish verb _ligot_, “to swing,” with

reference to the sun swinging in the sky at this turning-point of his

course.(743)