Fig. 168.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).
In other parts of Bohemia—and the curious reader will find several Bohemias on the Ordnance maps of England—the song varies; it is not Summer that comes back but Life:—
We have carried away Death,
And brought back Life.[322]
At the feast of the Ascension in Transylvania, the image of Death is clothed gaudily in the dress of a girl: having wound throughout the village supported by two girls the image is stripped of its finery and flung into the river; the dress, however, is assumed by one of the girls and the procession returns singing a hymn. “Thus,” says Miss Harrison, “it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated Death.” In other words, like the May Queen she symbolised the Virgin or Fairy Queen—Vera or Una, the Spirit, Sprout, or Spirit of the Universe, the Fair Ovary of Everything who is represented on the summit of the Christmas Tree: in Latin virgo means not only a virgin but also a sprig or sprout.
FOOTNOTES:
[255] Fairy Mythology, p. 298.
[256] Courtney, Miss, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, p. 129.
[257] Hope, R. C., Sacred Wells.