Section 4. Bringing in Summer.
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." 1
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." 2
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. 3
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 day 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. 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. 4
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. 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. 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. 5
In the Lusatian ceremony described above, 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. 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, show 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. 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. 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.
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. Perhaps the sticks had been previously used to beat the
Death, and so had acquired the fertilising power ascribed to the
effigy. We have seen, too, that at Leipsic a straw effigy of Death
was shown to young wives to make them fruitful. 6
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, therefore the trees obviously represent the Summer;
indeed in Silesia they are commonly called the Summer or the
May, 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. 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. 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. 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; for this
influence, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, 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;
and that sometimes it is hung on a little tree and so carried about
by girls collecting money, 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. 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 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. 7
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 not
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. 8