The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 02 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 02 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
[Sidenote: Tree-spirit represented simultaneously in vegetable and human
form.] There is an instructive class of cases in which the tree-spirit
is represented simultaneously in vegetable form and in human form, which
are set side by side as if for the express purpose of explaining each
other. In these cases the human representative of the tree-spirit is
sometimes a doll or puppet, sometimes a living person; but whether a
puppet or a person, it is placed beside a tree or bough; so that
together the person or puppet, and the tree or bough, form a sort of
bilingual inscription, the one being, so to speak, a translation of the
other. Here, therefore, there is no room left for doubt that the spirit
of the tree is actually represented in human form. Thus in Bohemia, on
the fourth Sunday in Lent, young people throw a puppet called Death into
the water; then the girls go into the wood, cut down a young tree, and
fasten to it a puppet dressed in white clothes to look like a woman;
with this tree and puppet they go from house to house collecting
gratuities and singing songs with the refrain:—
“_We carry Death out of the village,
We bring Summer into the village._”[284]
Here, as we shall see later on, the “Summer” is the spirit of vegetation
returning or reviving in spring. In some parts of our own country
children go about asking for pence with some small imitations of
May-poles, and with a finely-dressed doll which they call the Lady of
the May.[285] In these cases the tree and the puppet are obviously
regarded as equivalent.
[Sidenote: The Little May Rose.] At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called the
Little May Rose, dressed in white, carries a small May-tree, which is
gay with garlands and ribbons. Her companions collect gifts from door to
door, singing a song:—
“_Little May Rose turn round three times,
Let us look at you round and round!
Rose of the May, come to the greenwood away,
We will be merry all.
So we go from the May to the roses._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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