Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

770 SUMMER AND WINTEE.
accounts that have escaped my notice. In S. Germany, Swabia,
Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Styria, the ditties are longer and
more formal, but the ceremony itself not so artless and racy. In
Lower Hesse, Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Friesland, and the
Netherlands, that is to say, where Easter-fires remained in vogue,
I can hardly anywhere detect this annunciation of Summer;
in lieu of it we shall find in N. Germany a far more imposing
development of May-riding and the Maigraf feast. Whether the
announcing of Summer extended beyond
the Palatinate into
Treves, Lorraine, and so into France, I cannot say for certain. 1
Clearly it was not Protestant or Catholic religion
that deter
mined the longer duration or speedier extinction of the custom.
It is rather striking that it should be rifest just in Middle
Germany, and lean on Slav countries behind, which likewise do it
homage ; but that is no reason for concluding that it is of Slav
origin, or that Slavs could have imported it up to and beyond the
Rhine. We must first consider more closely these Slav customs.
In Bohemia, children march, with a straw man representing
Death, to the end of the village, and there burn him while they
sing:
Giz nesem Smrt ze wsy, Now bear we I), from the village,
nowe Leto do wsy ; new Summer to the village ;
witey Leto libezne,
welcome Summer sweet,
obiljc ko zelene ! little grain so green.
1 C. H. Schmid has indeed drawn up (Journ. v. u. f. D. 1790, 314-5) a list of
the lands and spots where Winter or Death is carried out, and it includes parts of
L. Saxony, Mecklenburg, even Friesland. But no authorities are given and ; other
customs, similar, but without any of the distinctive features of the subject in hand,
are mixed up with it. Aug. Pfeiffer (b. Lauenstein 1640, d. Liibeck 98) in Evang.
Erquickungstunden, Leipz. 1698 mentions a battle of Sum. and Win. but names
,
no places, and he had lived long in Silesia and Leipzig. H. Lubbert (preacher at
Bohlendorf by Liibeck, b. 1640, d. 1703) in his Fastnachtsteufel p. 6 describes a
March (not May) procession, but does not sufficiently bring out the essential fea
tures. I extract the passage (from J. P. Schmidt s Fastelab. p. 132), because it
illustrates the far from ineffectual zeal of the clergy against popular amusements,
almost as strikingly as the diatribe, 560 years older, quoted on pp. 259 : seq. The
last year, on Dominica Quinquag. (4 weeks bef.
Laetare), I again publicly prayed
every man to put away, once for all, these pagan doings. Alas, I was doomed to
see the wicked worldlings do it worse than before. Not alone did children carrying
long sticks wrapt in green leaves go about within doors, and sing all manner of lewd
jests, but specially the men-servants, one of them having a green petticoat tied about
him, went in two parties through the village from house to house with a bag-pipe,
singing, swilling, rioting like madmen in the houses ;
afterward they joined together,
drank, danced, and kept such pother several nights through, that one scarce could
sleep for it. At the said ungodly night-dances were even some lightminded maids,
that took part in the accursed business.