The festival customs include a number of dramatic rites which appear to have been originally symbolical expressions of the facts of seasonal recurrence lying at the root of the festivals themselves. The antithesis of winter and summer, the _renouveau_ of spring, are mimed in three or four distinct fashions. The first and the most important, as well as the most widespread of these, is the mock representation of a death or burial. Dr. Frazer has collected many instances of the ceremony known as the ‘expulsion of Death[626].’ This takes place at various dates in spring and early summer, but most often on the fourth Sunday in Lent, one of the many names of which is consequently _Todten-Sonntag_. An effigy is made, generally of straw, but in some cases of birch twigs, a beechen bough, or other such material. This is called Death, is treated with marks of fear, hatred or contempt, and is finally carried in procession, and thrust over the boundary of the village. Or it is torn in pieces, buried, burnt, or thrown into a river or pool. Sometimes the health or other welfare of the folk during the year is held to depend on the rite being duly performed. The fragments of Death have fertilizing efficacy for women and cattle; they are put in the fields, the mangers, the hens’ nests. Here and there women alone take part in the ceremony, but more often it is common to the whole village. The expulsion of Death is found in various parts of Teutonic Germany, but especially in districts such as Thuringia, Bohemia, Silesia, where the population is wholly or mainly Slavonic. A similar custom, known both in Slavonic districts and in Italy, France, and Spain, had the name of ‘sawing the old woman.’ At Florence, for instance, the effigy of an old woman was placed on a ladder. At Mid Lent it was sawn through, and the nuts and dried fruits with which it was stuffed scrambled for by the crowd. At Palermo there was a still more realistic representation with a real old woman, to whose neck a bladder of blood was fitted[627].