Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

DKESSING- UP IN GREEN. 787
ceremonial. On White Sunday/ a fortnight before Easter, the
herdboys march to the pasture with white sticks (supra p. 766),
and with these they mark off a spot, to which no one may drive
This being done, the smaller boys
his cattle till Whitsuntide. 1
name their brides 2 to the bigger ones, and no one must reveal
the name till Whitsunday, when the railed-off pasture is thrown
open, and any one may tell the brides names. On Whitmonday
one of the boys is disguised by having two petticoats put on him,
and one of them pulled over his head and tied up; then they
swathe him in may, hang flower-wreaths about his neck, and
set a flower-crown on his head. They call him the fiistge mai
(well-appointed, armed), and lead him round to all the houses;
at the same time the girls go round with their may -bride, who is
completely covered with ribbons, her bridal band hanging to the
ground behind ; she wears a large nosegay on her head, and keeps
on singing her ditties till some gift is handed to her.
Other villages have horse-races on Whitmonday for a wreath
which is hung out. Whoever snatches it down both times is
crowned, and led in triumph to the village as May-Jdng.
A work composed in the 13th cent, by Aegidius aureae vallis
religiosus reports the Netherland custom of electing a Whitsun
queen in the time of bp. Albero of Liittich (d. 1155)
dotes ceteraeque ecclesiasticae personae cum universo populo, in
: Sacer-
solemnitatibus paschae et pentecostes, aliquam ex sacerdotum
concubinis, purpuratam ac diademate renitentem in eminentiori
solio constitutam et cortinis velatam, reginam creabant, et coram
ea assistentes in choreis tympanis et aliis musicalibus instruments
tota die psallebant, et quasi idolatrae effecti ipsam tanguam
idolum colebant, Chapeaville 2, 98. To this day poor women
in Holland at Whitsuntide carry about a girl sitting in a little
1 While this fallow pasture is being railed off, the new lads (those who are tend
ing for the first time) have to procure bones to cover the branches of a fir-tree which
is erected. The tree is called the gibbet of bones, and its top adorned with a horse s
skull (Kuhn 323-4) : plainly a relic of some heathen sacrificial rite, couf. the
elevation of animals on trees, pp. 53, 75, esp. of horses heads, p. 47; the good
Lubbe s hill of bones is also in point, p. 526.
2 This naming of brides resembles the crying of fiefs on Walburgis eve in
Hesse, on the L. Ehine, the Ahr and the Eifel, Zeitschr. f. Hess, gesch. 2, 272-7.
Dieffenbach s Wetterau p. 234. Ernst Weyden s Ahrthal, Bonn 1839, p. 210.
And who can help remembering the ON. heit strengja at Yule-tide? when the
:i
heroes likewise chose their loved ones, e.g. in Sasm. 146 : Hefiinn strengdi heit til
Svavo.