The early Italians a pastoral as well as agricultural people; the
shepherds’ festival of the Parilia on 21st April; intention of the
festival to ensure the welfare of the flocks and herds and to guard them
against witches and wolves; festival of the same kind still held in
Eastern Europe on 23rd April, St. George’s Day; precautions taken by the
Esthonians against witches and wolves on St. George’s Day, when they
drive out the cattle to pasture for the first time; St. George’s Day a
pastoral festival in Russia; among the Ruthenians, among the Huzuls of
the Carpathians; St. George as the patron of horses in Silesia and
Bavaria; St. George’s Day among the Saxons and Roumanians of
Transylvania; St. George’s Day a herdsman’s festival among the
Walachians, Bulgarians, and South Slavs; precautions taken against
witches and wolves whenever the cattle are driven out to pasture for the
first time, as in Prussia and Sweden; these parallels illustrate some
features of the Parilia; St. George as a personification of trees or
vegetation in general; St. George as patron of childbirth and love; St.
George seems to have displaced an old Aryan god of the spring, such as
the Lithuanian Pergrubiusk.