Chapter XIX.—St. George and the Parilia Pp. 324-348

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.