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EXPULSION OF DEATH. 767
Then : Wir haben den Tod hinausgetrieben (driven out),
den lieben Sommer bringen wir wieder (again),
den Sommer und den Meien
nait bliimlein mancherleien (of many a sort) .
So Death has stept into Winter s place ; we might say, because
in winter nature slumbers and seems dead ; but it may also be,
that at an early time some heathenish name for Winter had to
give place to the Christian conception of Death.
When we get to the heart of Franconia, e.g. Niirnberg, the
songs drop ail mention of Summer, and dwell the more em
phatically on the expulsion of Death. 1 There country lasses of
seventeen or eighteen, arrayed in all their finery, parade the
streets of the whole town and suburbs; on or under their left
arm they carry a little open coffin, with a shroud hanging over
the sides, and a puppet lying under that. Poor children carry
nothing but an open box, in which lies a green bough of beech
with a stalk sticking up, on which an apple is fixed instead of
the head. Their monotone song begins : To-day is Midlent,
we bear Death into the water, and that is well/ Amongst other
things :
Wir tragen den Tod iris wasser,
tragen ihn nein, und wieder raus 2
(in, and out again),
1 a
Seb. Frank s Weltbuch 51 thus describes the Shrovetide custom in Fran
conia : Four of them hold a sheet by his 4 corners, whereon is laid a straw
puppet in hose, jerkin and mask, like a dead man, the which they toss up by the
4 corners, and catch him again in the sheet. This they do the whole town through.
At Midlent they make in some places a straw man or imp, arrayed as a death, him
the assembled youth bear into the nigh lying villages. And by some they be well
received, eased and fed with dried pears, milk and peas ; by others, which hold it
a presage of coming death, evil entreated and driven from their homesteads with
foul words and oftentimes with buffets.
2 This seems to indicate, that the deity of Death is not to be annihilated by
the ducking, but only made sensible of the people s dissatisfaction. Cruel Death
has during the year snatched many a victim, and men wish, as it were, to be
20 : when
revenged on him. This is of a piece with the idea brought out on p.
a god has not answered your expectations, you bully him, you plunge his image
into water. So by the Franconians, on a failure of the wine-crop, St. Urban s
image, who had neglected to procure them wine (Fischart s Garg. 11) was flung into
the brook, or the mud (Seb. Frank 51 b ), or the water-trough, even in the mere antici
pation of a poor vintage (Agricola s Sprichw. 498. Grater s Idunna 1812, p. 87).
So the Bavarians, during St. Leonhard s solemn procession, would occasionally
drop him in the river (Schm. 2, 473). We know how the Naples people to this day
go to work with their San Gennaro, how seamen in a storm ill-use St. James s
image, not to speak of other instances.