TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

58 WORSHIP.
ribbons. To this day, at a fruit-gathering in Holstein, five or six
apples are left hanging on each tree, and then the next crop will thrive.
More striking examples of this custom will be given later, in treat
ing of individual gods. But, just as tame and eatable animals
were especially available for sacrifice, so are fruit-trees (frugiferae
arbores, Tac. Germ. 10), and grains; and at a formal transfer of
land, boughs covered with leaves, apples or nuts are used as earnest
of the bargain. The MHG. poet (Fundgr. II, 25) describes Cain s
*
sacrifice in the words : eine garb er nam, er wolte sie oppheren mil
eheren joch mit agenen a sheaf he took, he would offer it with ears
and eke with spikes : a formula expressing at once the upper part
or beard (arista), and the whole ear and stalk (spica) as well.
Under this head we also put the crowning of the divine image, of a
sacred tree or a sacrificed animal with foliage or flowers ; not the
faintest trace of this appears in the Norse sagas, and as little in our
oldest documents. From later times and surviving folk-tales I can
bring forward a few things. On Ascension day the girls in more
than one part of Germany twine garlands of white and red flowers,
and hang them up in the dwellingroom or over the cattle in the
stable, where they remain till replaced by fresh ones the next year. 1
At the village of Questenberg in the Ilarz, on the third day in
Whitsuntide, the lads carry an oak up the castle-hill which
overlooks the whole district, and, when they have set it upright,
fasten to it a large garland of branches of trees plaited together,
and as big as a cartwheel. They
all
*
shout the queste (i.e. garland)
hangs, and then they dance round the tree on the hill top ; both
tree and garland are renewed every
2
year. Not far from the
Meisner mountain in Hesse stands a high precipice with a cavern
opening under it, which goes by the name of the Hollow Stone.
Into this cavern every Easter Monday the youths and maidens of
the neighbouring villages carry nosegays, and then draw some
cooling water. No one will venture down, unless he has flowers
with him. 3 The lands in some Hessian townships have to pay a
~bunch of mayflowers (lilies of the valley) every year for rent. 4 In
all these examples, which can easily be multiplied, a heathen
1
Bragur VI. 1, 126.
2 Otmars volkssagen, pp. 128-9. What is told of the origin of the custom
seems to be fiction.
3
Wigands archiv 6, 317.
4
Wigands archiv C, 318. Casselsches wochenbl. 1815, p. 928b .