Part 3

After forenoon church on that day, the school-girls of the parish repair to the house of one of their companions, and there proceed to dress up the 'Death.' This is done by tying up a threshed-out corn-sheaf into the rough semblance of a head and body, while the arms are simulated by a broomstick stuck horizontally. This done, the figure is dressed up in the Sunday clothes of a young village matron, the head adorned with the customary cap and veil fastened by silver pins; two large black beads, or black-headed pins, represent the eyes, and thus equipped the figure is displayed at the open window, in order that all people may see it, on their way to afternoon church. The conclusion of vespers[18] is the signal for the girls to seize the figure and open the procession round the village; two of the eldest girls hold the 'Death' between them, and the others follow in regular order two and two, singing a Lutheran Church hymn. The boys are excluded from the procession, and must content themselves with admiring the _Schöner Tod_ (handsome Death) from a distance. When all the village streets have been traversed in this manner, the girls repair to another house, whose door is locked against the besieging troop of boys. The figure Death is here stripped of its gaudy attire, and the naked straw bundle thrown out of the window, whereupon it is seized by the boys and carried off in triumph to be thrown into the neighbouring stream or river. This is the first part of the drama, while the second consists in one of the girls being solemnly invested with the clothes and ornaments previously worn by the figure, and like it, led in procession round the village to the singing of the same hymn as before. This is to represent the arrival of summer. The ceremony terminates by a feast given by the parents of the girl who has acted the principal part, from which the boys are again excluded.

According to popular belief it is allowed to eat fruits only after this day, as now the 'Death,' that is, the unwholesomeness, has been expelled from them. Also the river in which the Death has been drowned may now be considered fit for public bathing.

If this ceremony be ever omitted in the villages where it is customary, this neglect is supposed to entail the death of one of the youths or maidens.

This same ceremony may, as I have said, be found still lingering in many other places, everywhere with slight variations. There are villages where the figure is burnt instead of drowned, and Passion Sunday (often called the Dead Sunday), or else the 25th of March, are the days sometimes chosen for its accomplishment. In some places it was usual for the straw figure to be attired in the shirt of the last person who had died, and with the veil of the most recent bride on its head. Also the figure is occasionally pelted with stones by the youth of both sexes; whoever hits it will not die during the year.

At Nuremberg little girls dressed in white used to go in procession through the town, carrying a small open coffin, in which a doll was laid out in state, or sometimes only a stick dressed up, with an apple to represent the head.

In many of these German places, the rhymes which are sung apply to the advent of summer and the extinction of winter, such as the following:--

And now we have chased the death away And brought in the summer so warm and so gay; The summer and the month of May We bring sweet flowers full many a one. We bring the rays of the golden sun, For the dreary death at last is gone.

or else,

Come all of you and do not tarry The evil death away to carry; Come, spring, once more, with us to dwell, Welcome, O spring, in wood and dell!

And there is no doubt that similar rhymes used also to be sung here, until they were replaced by the Lutheran hymns.

Some German archæologists have attempted to prove that 'death' in these games is of more recent introduction, and has replaced the 'winter' of former times, so as to give the ceremony a more Christian colouring by the allusion of the triumph of Christ over death, on His resurrection and ascension into heaven. Without presuming to contradict the many well-known authorities who have taken this view of the case, I cannot help thinking that it hardly requires such explanation to account for the presence of death in these dramas. Nowadays, when luxury and civilisation have done so much towards equalising all seasons, so that we can never be deprived of flowers in winter, nor want for ice in summer, we can with difficulty realise the enormous gulf which in olden times separated winter from summer. Not only in winter were all means of communication cut off for a large proportion of people, but their very existence was, so to say, frozen up; and if the granaries were scantily filled, or the inclement season prolonged by some weeks, death was literally standing at the door of thousands of poor wretches. No wonder, then, that winter and death became identical in their minds, and that they hailed the advent of spring with delirious joy, dancing round the first violet, and following about the first cockchafer in solemn procession. It was the feast of Nature which they celebrated then as now--Nature mighty and eternal--which must always remain essentially the same, whether decked out in Pagan or Christian garb.

Another remnant of Paganism is the _Feurix_ or _Feuriswolf_, which lingers yet in the mind of these people. According to ancient German mythology the _Feuriswolf_ is a monster which, on the last day, is to open his mouth so wide that the top jaw touches the sky, and the lower one the earth; and not long ago a Saxon woman bitterly complained in a court of justice that her husband had cursed her over strongly, in saying, 'Der wärlthangd saul dich frieszen;' literally, 'May the world-dog swallow thee!'

The gipsies take up a different position as regards superstition from either Roumenian or Saxon, since they may be rather considered to be direct causes and mainsprings of superstition, than victims of credulity themselves. The Tzigane, whose religion is of such an extremely superficial nature that he rarely believes in anything as complicated as the immortality of the soul, can hardly be supposed to lay much weight upon the supernatural; and if he instinctively avoids such places as churchyards, gallow-trees, &c., his feelings are rather those of a child who shirks being reminded of anything so unpleasant as death or burial.

That, however, these people exercise a considerable influence on their Saxon and Roumenian neighbours is undoubted, and it is a paradoxical fact, that the same people who regard the gipsy as an undoubted thief, liar, and cheat, in all the common transactions of daily life, do not hesitate to confide in him blindly for charmed medicines and love-potions, and are ready to attribute to him unerring power in deciphering the mysteries of the future.

The Saxon peasant will, it is true, often drive away the fortune-teller with blows and curses from his door, but his wife, as often as not, will secretly beckon to her to come in again by the back door, in order to be consulted as to the illness of the cows, or to beg from her a remedy against the fever.

Wonderful potions and salves, in which the fat of bears, dogs, snakes and snails, along with the oil of rain-worms, the bodies of spiders and midges rubbed into a paste, and many other similar ingredients, are concocted by these cunning Bohemians, who will sometimes thus make thrice as much money out of the carcass of a dead dog as another from the sale of three healthy pigs.

It has also been averred that both Roumenian and Saxon mothers, whose sickly infants are thought to be suffering from the effects of the evil eye, are frequently in the habit of giving the child to be nursed for a period of nine days to some gipsy woman, who is supposed to be able to undo the spell.

There is not a village which does not boast of one or more fortune-tellers, and living in the suburbs of each town are many old women who make an easy and comfortable livelihood only by imposing on the credulity of their fellow-creatures.

The gipsies, one of whose principal trades is the burning of bricks and tiles, are often accused of occasioning lengthy droughts to suit their own purposes. When this has occurred, and the necessary rains have not been produced by soundly beating the guilty Tziganes, the Roumenians sometimes resort to the _Papaluga_, or Rain-maiden. This is done by stripping a young gipsy girl quite naked, and dressing her up with wreaths of flowers and leaves which entirely cover her up, leaving only the head visible. Thus adorned, the Papaluga is conducted round the villages in procession, to the sound of music and singing, and everyone hastens to water her copiously.

If also the Papaluga fails to bring the desired rain, then the evil must evidently be of a deeper and more serious nature, and is to be attributed to a vampire, who must be sought out and destroyed in the manner described above.

The part of the Papaluga is also sometimes enacted by a Roumenian maiden, when there is no reason to suspect the gipsies of being concerned in the drought. This custom of the Rain-maiden is also to be found in Servia, and I believe in Croatia.

It would be endless were I to attempt to enumerate all the different sorts of superstition afloat in this country; for besides the three principal definitions here given, the subject comprises innumerable other side branches, and might further be divided into the folk-lore of shepherds, farmers, hunters, miners, fishermen, &c., each of these separate callings having its own peculiar set of signs, customs, charms, and traditions to go by.

Superstition is an evil which every person with a well-balanced mind should wish to die out, yet it cannot be denied that some of these fancies are graceful and suggestive. Nettles and briars, albeit mischievous plants, may yet come in picturesquely in a landscape; and although the stern agriculturist is bound to rejoice at their uprooting, the softer-hearted artist is surely free to give them a passing sigh of regret.

E. Gerard.

[Footnote 1: 'Der Aberglaube in seiner Mannigfaltigkeit bildet gewissermassen eine Religion für den ganzen niederen Hausbedarf.']

[Footnote 2: This would seem to suggest a German (or Celtic) origin. Donar, as god of marriages, blesses unions with his hammer.]

[Footnote 3: This spirit corresponds to the Polednice of the Bohemians and the Poludnica of the Poles and Russians. Grimm, in speaking of the Russians, in his German Mythology, quotes from Boxhorn's _Resp. Moscov._: 'Dæmonem meridianum Moscovitæ et colunt.']

[Footnote 4: This is also usual in Poland, Moldavia, and the Bukowina.]

[Footnote 5: The Roumenian peasant does not wear shoes or stockings, but has his feet swaddled up in linen rags, which are kept in their place by a rough sandal made of a flat piece of leather.]

[Footnote 6: Also believed in Poland.]

[Footnote 7: Archæologists have derived this word from _Pri_, which in Sanscrit means fruitful, and _Hu_, the god of the Celtic deluge tradition, also regarded as a personification of fruitful nature.]

[Footnote 8: The Council of Constantinople, 869 A.D., forbade the members of the Oriental Church to keep the feast of the Pagan goddess, Kolinda, occurring on the shortest day.]

[Footnote 9: Called Turon by the Poles, who have many similar games.]

[Footnote 10: This detail would seem to bear some resemblance to Saturn devouring his children, and being cheated by stones thrown into his jaws.]

[Footnote 11: Likewise in Bavaria.]

[Footnote 12: Also believed by most Slav nations.]

[Footnote 13: The original signification of this seems to have gone astray, but was probably based on former worship of the horse, long regarded as a sacred animal by Indians, Parsees, Arabs, and Germans.]

[Footnote 14: So in India the Matris, also known amongst the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Mexicans. A corresponding spirit is likewise found in the Scandinavian and Lithuanian mythologies; in the latter under the name of _medziajna_.]

[Footnote 15: Also practised in Poland.]

[Footnote 16: Also believed by the Roumenians.]

[Footnote 17: The word _Götzen_ in German signifies Pagan deities.]

[Footnote 18: Afternoon church is always called vespers by the Saxon villager, though I believe it has no resemblance to the chanted vespers of the Roman Catholics.]

Transcriber's Notes

The original text was published in: The Nineteenth Century, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, July-December 1885, pp. 130-150.

The transcriber made a very few changes to the text in order to correct obvious errors (before/after):

[p. 135]: ... This is also usual in Poland, Moldavia, and the Bukowinq. ... ... This is also usual in Poland, Moldavia, and the Bukowina. ...

[p. 147]: ... is the Todanstragen, or throwing out the Death, a custom still extant ... ... is the Todaustragen, or throwing out the Death, a custom still extant ...

End of Project Gutenberg's Transylvanian Superstitions, by Emily Gerard