The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
The first man who succeeds in wrenching it from the
ground as he gallops past keeps it with all its decorations. The ceremony
is observed every second or third year.(814)
In Saxony and Thüringen there is a Whitsuntide ceremony called “chasing
the Wild Man out of the bush,” or “fetching the Wild Man out of the wood.”
A young fellow is enveloped in leaves or moss and called the Wild Man. He
hides in the wood and the other lads of the village go out to seek him.
They find him, lead him captive out of the wood, and fire at him with
blank muskets. He falls like dead to the ground, but a lad dressed as a
doctor bleeds him, and he comes to life again. At this they rejoice and
binding him fast on a waggon take him to the village, where they tell all
the people how they have caught the Wild Man. At every house they receive
a gift.(815) In the Erzgebirge the following custom was annually observed
at Shrovetide about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two men
disguised as Wild Men, the one in brushwood and moss, the other in straw,
were led about the streets, and at last taken to the market-place, where
they were chased up and down, shot and stabbed. Before falling they reeled
about with strange gestures and spirted blood on the people from bladders
which they carried. When they were down, the huntsmen placed them on
boards and carried them to the alehouse, the miners marching beside them
and winding blasts on their mining tools as if they had taken a noble head
of game.(816) A very similar Shrovetide custom is still observed in the
neighbourhood of Schluckenau (Bohemia). A man dressed up as a Wild Man is
chased through several streets till he comes to a narrow lane across which
a cord is stretched. He stumbles over the cord and, falling to the ground,
is overtaken and caught by his pursuers. The executioner runs up and stabs
with his sword a bladder filled with blood which the Wild Man wears round
his body; so the Wild Man dies, while a stream of blood reddens the
ground. Next day a straw-man, made up to look like the Wild Man, is placed
on a litter, and, accompanied by a great crowd, is taken to a pool into
which it is thrown by the executioner. The ceremony is called “burying the
Carnival.”(817)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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