Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

590
ELEMENTS.
nounced by that Father as a relic of paganism : natal i Johannis,
de solemnitate superstitiosa pagana, Christian! ad mare veniebant,
et se baptizabant (Opp., Paris 1683, torn. 5, p. 903); and again:
1
ne ullus in festivitate S. Johannis in fontibus aut paludibus aut
in fluminibus, nocturnis aut matutinis horis se lavare praesumat,
quia haec infelix consuetude adhuc de Paganorum observatione
remansit (Appetid. to torn. 5 p. 462). Generally sanctioned by
the church it certainly was not, yet it might be allowed here and
there, as a not unapt reminder of the Baptizer in the Jordan,
and now interpreted of him, though once it had been heathen.
It might easily come into extensive favour, and that not as a
Christian feast alone : to our heathen forefathers St. John s day
would mean the festive middle of the year, when the sun turns,
and there might be many customs connected with it. I confess,
if Petrarch had witnessed the bathing in the river at some small
town,
I would the sooner take it for a native rite of the ancient
Germani ; at Cologne, the holy city so renowned for its relics, I
rather suspect it to be a custom first introduced by Christian
tradition (see Suppl.). 1
There are lakes and springs whose waters periodically rise and
fall : from either phenomenon mischief is prognosticated, a death,
war, approaching dearth. When the reigning prince is about to
die, the river is supposed to stop in its course, as if to indicate its
grief (Deut. sag. no. 110) ; if the well runs dry,
the head of the
family will die soon after (no. 103). A spring that either runs
over or dries up, foreboding dearth, is called hunyerquelle, hunger-
brunnen (Staid. 2, 63). Wossingen near Durlach has a hunger-
brunnen, which is said to flow abundantly when the year is going
to be unfruitful, and then also the fish it produces are small. 2
1 In Poland and Silesia, and perhaps in a part of Russia, girls who have over
slept matin-time on Easter Monday are soused ivith water by the lads, and flogged
with birch twigs ; they are often pulled out of bed at night, and dragged to a river
or cistern, or a trough filled with water, and are ducked. The Silesians call this
schmagostern (even Estor s Oberhess. idiot, has schmakustern = giving the rod at
Easter); perh. from Pol. smi6, Boh. smyti, so that smigust would be rinsing
[SUPPL. says, better from smagac to flog ] . The Poles say both smic and dyngowac,
dyngus, of the splashing each other with water (conf. Hanusch, p. 197), and
the time of year seems to be St. John s day as well as Easter. In the Russian gov.
of Archangel, the people bathe in the river on June 23, and sprinkle kupalnitsa
(ranunculus acris), Karamzin 1, 73-4 [the same is also a surname of St. Agrippina,
on whose day, June 24, river-bathing (kupalnia) commences]. Everywhere a
beliaf in the sacredness of the Easter-bath and St. John s-bath.
2 Mone s Anz. 3, 221. 340, who gives a forced and misleading explanation of the