Chapter 24

At Bielsk in Podlachia, on Dead Sunday they carry an idol of plaited hemp or straw through the town, then drown it in a marsh or pond outside, singing to a mournful strain:

Smierc wieie sie po plotu,

D. blows through the wattle,

szukaiac klopotu.

seeking the whirlpool.

They run home as fast as they can: if any one falls down, he dies within the year. (36) The Sorbs in Upper Lausitz make the figure of straw and rags; she who had the last corpse must supply the shirt, and the latest bride the veil and all the rags; (37) the scarecrow is stuck on a long pole, and carried away by the biggest strongest lass at the top of her speed, while the rest sing:

Lecz hore, lecz hore!

Fly high, fly high,

jatabate woko,

twist thyself round,

pan dele, pan dele!

fall down, fall down.
They all throw sticks and stones at it: whoever hits Death will not die that year. So the figure is borne out of the village to a piece of water, and drowned in it. But they often carry Death to the boundary of the next village, and pitch him over it; each picks for himself a green twig, and carries it homeward in high glee, but on arriving at his village throws it away again. Sometimes the youth of the village within whose bounds they have brought Death will run after them, and throw him back, for no one likes to keep him; and they easily come to words and blows about it. (38) At other places in Lausitz women alone take part in this Driving-out of Death, and suffer no men to meddle. They all go in black veils that day, and having tied up a puppet of straw, put a white shirt on it, and give it a broom in one hand, and a scythe in the other. This puppet they carry singing, and pursued by boys throwing stones, to the border of the next town, where they tear it up. Then they hew down a handsome tree in the wood, hang the shirt upon it, and carry it home with songs. (39) This tree is undoubtedly a symbol of Summer introduced in the place of Death driven out. Such decorated trees are also carried about the village by boys collecting gifts, after they have rid themselves of Death. In other cases they demand the contributions while taking the puppet round. Here and there they make the straw man peep into people's windows (as Berhta looks in at the window, p. 274): in that case Death will carry off some one in the house that year, but by paying a money ransom in time, you can avert the omen. At Königshain by Görlitz the whole village, young and old, wended their way with torches of straw to a neighbouring height called the Todtenstein, where formerly a god's image is said to have stood; they lit their torches on the top, and turned home singing, with constant repetition of the words: 'we have driven out Death, we bring back Summer.' (40)

So it is not everywhere that the banished idol represented Winter or Death in the abstract; in some cases it is still the heathen divinity giving way to Christianity, whom the people thrust out half in sorrow, and uttering songs of sadness. Dlugosz, (41) and others after him, report that by order of king Miecislaus all the idols in the land were broken up and burnt; in remembrance of which the people in some parts of Poland, once a year, singing mournful songs, conduct in solemn procession images of Marzana and Ziewonia, fixed on poles or drawn on drags, to a marsh or river, and there drown them; (42) paying them so to speak, their last homage. Dlugosz's explanation of Marzana as 'harvest-goddess' seems erroneous; Fencel's and Schaffarik's 'death-goddess' is more acceptable: I derive the name from the Pol. marznac, Boh. mrznauti, Russ. merznut', to freeze, and in opposition to her as winter-goddess I set the summer-goddess Wiosna, Boh. Wesna. The Königenhof MS. p. 72 has a remarkable declaration: 'i iedinu druzu nám imiét' po puti z Wesny po Moranu,' one wife (only) may we have on our way from Wesna to Morana, from spring to winter, i.e. ever. Yet the throwing or dipping of the divine image in a stream need not have been done by the Christians in mere contempt, it may have formed a part of the pagan rite itself; for an antithesis between summer and winter, and an exalting of the former, necessarily implied a lowering of the latter. (43)

The day for carrying Death out was the quarta dominica quadragesimae, i.e. Laetare Sunday or Midlent, on which very day it also falls in Poland (w nieziele srodopostna), Bohemia, Silesia and Lausitz. The Bohemians call it smrtedlna, samrtná nedele, the Sorbs smerdnitsa, death Sunday; coming three weeks before Easter, it will almost always occur in March. Some have it a week earlier, on Oculi Sunday, others (espec. in Bohemia) a week later, on Judica Sunday; one Boh. song even brings in 'Mag nowy,' new May. But in the Rhine and Main country, as in most places, Laetare is the festive day, and is there called Summerday.

There is no getting over this unanimity as to the time of the festival. To the ancient Slavs, whose new year began in March, it marked the commencement of the year, and likewise of the summer half-year, i.e. of their lèto; to Germans the arrival of summer or spring, for in March their stork and swallow come home, and the first violet blows. But then the impersonal 'lèto' of the Slavs fights no battle with their Smrt: this departing driven-out god has the play nearly all to himself. To our ancestors the contest between the two giants was the essential thing in the festival; vanquished Winter has indeed his parallel in Smrt, but with victorious Summer there is no living personality to compare. And, beside this considerable difference between the Slav ceremony and our own, as performed on the Rhine or Neckar, it is also difficult to conceive how a native Slav custom should have pushed itself all the way to the Odenwald and the Palatinate beyond Rhine, accountable as it might be on the upper Main, in the Fulda country, Meissen or Thuringia. What is still more decisive, we observe that the custom is known, not to all the Slavs, but just to those in Silesia, Lausitz, Bohemia and, with a marked difference, in Poland; not to the South Slavs at all, nor apparently to those settled in Pomerania, Mecklenburg and Lüneburg. Like our Bavarians and Tyrolese, the Carniolans, Styrians and Slovaks have it not; neither have the Pomeranians and Low Saxons. (44) Only a central belt of territory has preserved it, alike among Slavs and Germans, and doubtless from a like cause. I do not deny that in very early times it may have been common to all Slav and all Teutonic races, indeed for Germany I consider it scarcely doubtful, because for one thing the old songs of Nîthart and others are sufficient proof for Austria, and secondly because in Scandinavia, England, and here and there in N. Germany, appears the custom of May-riding, which is quite the same thing as the Rhenish 'summer-day' in March.

Olaus Magnus 15, 4 says: 'The Swedes and Goths have a custom, that on the first day of May the magistrates in every city make two troops of horse, of tall youths and men, to assemble, as tho' they would go forth to a mighty battle. One troop hath a captian, that under the name of Winter is arrayed in much fur and wadded garments, and is armed with a winterspear: he rideth arrogantly to and fro, showering snowballs and iceflakes, as he would fain prolong the cold, and much he vaulteth him in speech. The other troop hath contrariwise a captain, that is named the Blumengrave, he is clad in green boughs, leaves and flowers, and other summer raiment, and not right fencible; he rides into town the same time with the winter-captain, yet each in his several place and order, then hold a public tilting and tourney, wherein Summer hath the mastery, bearing Winter to the ground. Winter and his company scatter ashes and sparks about them, the others fend them with birchen boughs and young lime-twigs; finally, by the multitude around, the victory is awarded to Summer.'

Here Death is not once alluded to; in true Teutonic fashion, the whole business is made to lie between Summer and Winter; only, the simple procession of our peasant-folk has turned more into a chivalry pageant of opulent town-life. At the same time this induction of May into the city ('hisset kommer Sivard Snarensvend [p. 372n.], han förer os sommer,' or 'och bär oss sommer i by,' DV. 1, 14. Sv. forns. 1, 44. 'bära maj i by,' Dybeck runa 2, 67; in Schonen 'före somma i by') cuts a neater statelier figure than the miserable array of mendicant children, and is in truth a highly poetic and impressive spectacle. These Mayday sports are mentioned more than once in old Swedish and Danish chronicles, town regulations and records. Lords and kings not seldom took a part in them, they were a great and general national entertainment. Crowned with flowers, the majgrefve fared with a powerful escort over highway and thorp; banquet and round-dance followed. In Denmark the jaunting began on Walburgis day (May 1), and was called 'at ride Sommer i bye,' riding S. into the land: the young men ride in front, then the May-grave (floriger) with two garlands, one in each shoulder, the rest with only one; songs are sung in the town, all the maidens make a ring round the may-grave, who picks out one of them to be his majînde, by dropping a wreath on her head. Winter and his conflict with May are no longer mentioned in the Schonish and Danish festival. Many towns had regularly organized majgreve gilde. (45) But as the May-fire in Denmark was called 'gadeild,' gate (street) fire, so was the leader of the May-feast a gadebasse (gate bear), and his maiden partner gadelam (gate lamb) or gadinde; gadebasse and gadinde therefore mean the same as maigreve and maigrevinde. (46) There is a remarkable description in Mundelstrup's Spec. gentilismi etiamnum superstitis, Hafn. 1684: 'Qui ex junioribus rusticis contum stipulis accensis flammatum efficacius versus sidera tollere potuerit, praeses (gadebasse) incondito omnium clamore declaratur, nec non eodem tempore sua cuique ex rusticis puellis, quae tunc temporis vernacula appellantur gadelam ex rusticus puellis, quae tunc temporis vernacula appellantur gadelam, distribuitur, et quae praesidi adjicitur titulum hunc gadinde merebitur. (47) Hinc excipiunt convivia per universum illud temporis, quod inter arationem et foeniscium intercedit, quavis die dominica celebrari sueta, gadelams-gilder dicta, in quibus proceriorem circum arborem in antecessum humo immissam variisque corollis ac signis ornatam, corybantum more ad tympanorum stridentes sonitus bene poti saliunt.'

Now this May-riding, these May-graves, were an old tradition of Lower Germany also; and that apparently is the very reason why the Mid-German custom of welcoming summer at Laetare was not in vogue there. How could spring, which does not reappear in the North till the beginning of May, have been celebrated there in March? Besides, this May-festival may in early times have been more general in Germany; or does the distinction reach back to the rivalry between March and May as the month of the folkmote? (48) The maigreve at Greifswald, May 1, 1528, is incidentally mentioned by Sastrow in his Lebensbeschr. 1, 65-6; a license to the scholars at Pasewalk to hold a maigraf jaunt, in a Church-visitation ordinance of 1563 (Baltische studien 6, 137); and more precise information has lately been collected on the survival of May-riding at Hildesheim, where the beautiful custom only died out in the 18^th century. (49) Towards Whitsuntide the maigreve was elected, and the forest commoners in the Ilse had to hew timber from seven villages to build the May-waggon; all loppings must be loaded thereon, and only four horses allowed to draw it in the forest. A grand expedition from the town fetches away the waggon, the burgomaster and council receive a May-wreath from the commoners, and hand it over to the maigreve. The waggon holds 60 to 70 bundles of may (birch), which are delivered to the maigreve to be further distributed. Monasteries and churches get large bundles, every steeple is adorned with it, and the floor of the church strown with clippings of boxwood and field-flowers. The maigreve entertains the commoners, and is strictly bound to serve up a dish of crabs. But in all this we have only a fetching-in of the May-waggon from the wood under formal escort of the Maygrave; not a word now about the battle he had to fight with winter. Is it conceivable that earlier ages should have done without this battle? Assuredly they had it, and it was only by degrees that custom left it out. By and by it became content with even less. In some parishes of Holstein they keep the commencement of May by crowning a young fellow and a girl with leaves and flowers, conducting them with music to a tavern, and there drinking and dancing; the pair are called maigrev and maigrön, i.e. maigräfin (Schütze 3, 72). The Schleswig maygrave-feast (festum frondicomans) is described in Ulr. Petersen's treatise already quoted (p. 694 n.). (50) In Swabia the children at sunrise go into the wood, the boys carrying silk handkerchiefs on staves, the girls ribbons on boughs; their leader, the May-king, has a right to choose his queen. In Gelders they used on Mayday-eve to set up trees decorated and hung with tapers like a Christmas-tree; then came a song and ring-dance. (51) All over Germany, to this day, we have may-bushes brought into our houses at Whitsuntide: we do not fetch them in ourselves, nor go out to meet them. (52)




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