(M208) On Good Friday and the two previous days people in Croatia and Slavonia take rods with them to church, and when the service is over they beat each other “fresh and healthy.”(665) In some parts of Russia people returning from the church on Palm Sunday beat the children and servants who have stayed at home with palm branches, saying, “Sickness into the forest, health into the bones.”(666) A similar custom is widely known under the name of _Schmeckostern_ or “Easter Smacks” in some parts of Germany and Austria. The regions in which the practice prevails are for the most part districts in which the people either are or once were predominantly of Slavonic blood, such as East and West Prussia, Voigtland, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. While the German population call the custom _Schmeckostern_, the Slavonic inhabitants give it, according to their particular language or dialect, a variety of names which signify to beat or scourge. It is usually observed on Easter Monday, less frequently on Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday. Troops of boys or lads go from house to house on the morning of Easter Monday beating every girl or woman whom they meet; they even make their way into the bedrooms, and if they find any girls or women still abed, they compel them with blows to get up. Even grown-up men indulge themselves in the pastime of going to the houses of friends and relations to inflict the “Easter Smacks.” In some places, for example in the Leobschütz district of Silesia, the boys and men further claim and exercise the right of drenching all the girls and women with water on Easter Monday; and for this purpose they generally go about armed with squirts, which are not always charged with eau de Cologne. Next day, Easter Tuesday, the women have the right to retaliate on the men; however, they do not as a rule go about the streets but confine their operations to their own houses, beating and chasing from their beds any lads or men they can find lying in them. Children are less discriminating in their “Easter Smacks,” which they bestow impartially on parents and relations, friends and strangers, without observing the subtle distinction of sex. In many places it is only the women who are privileged to receive the smacks. The instrument with which the beating is administered is in some districts, such as Lithuania, Samland, and Neumark, a twig or branch of birch on which the fresh green leaves have just sprouted. If the birch-trees have not budded in time, it is customary to keep the rods in pickle for days or even weeks, nursing them tenderly in warm water; and if that measure also fails, they are heated in the stove-pipe. But more commonly the instrument of torture is a branch of willow with catkins on it, which has also been nursed in warm water or the chimney so as to be ripe for execution on Easter Monday. A number of these birch or willow twigs are usually tied together into a switch, and ornamented with motley ribbons and pieces of