A similar custom is observed in Greece and Roumania.[915] In Roumania the rain-maker is called Paparuda or Babaruda. She is a gypsy girl, who goes naked except for a short skirt of dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus) or of corn and vines. Thus scantily attired the girls go in procession from house to house, singing for rain, and are drenched by {p274} the people with buckets of water. The ceremony regularly takes place all over Roumania on the third Tuesday after Easter, but it may be repeated at any time of drought during the summer. But the Roumanians have another way of procuring rain. They make a clay figure to represent Drought, cover it with a pall, and place it in an open coffin. Girls crouch round the coffin and lament, saying, “Drought (Scaloi) is dead! Lord, give us rain!” Then the coffin is carried by children in funeral procession, with a burning wax candle before it, while lamentations fill the air. Finally, they throw the coffin and the candle into a stream or a well.[916] When rain is wanted in Bulgaria the people dress up a girl in branches of nut-trees, flowers, and the green stuff of beans, potatoes, and onions. She carries a nosegay of flowers in her hand, and is called Djuldjul or Peperuga. Attended by a train of followers she goes from house to house, and is received by the goodman with a kettleful of water, on which flowers are swimming. With this water he drenches her, while a song is sung:—
The Peperuga flew;
God give rain,
That the corn, the millet, and the wheat may thrive.
Sometimes the girl is dressed in flax to the girdle.[917] At Melenik, a Greek town in Macedonia, a poor orphan boy parades the streets in time of drought, decked with ferns and flowers, and attended by other boys of about the same age. The women shower water and money on him from the windows. He is called Dudulé, and as they march along the boys sing a song, which begins: “Hail, hail, Dudulé, (bring us) both maize and wheat.”[918] In Dalmatia also the custom is observed. The performer is a young unmarried man, who is dressed up, dances, and has water poured over him. He goes by the name of Prpats, and is attended by companions called Prporushe, who are young bachelors like himself.[919] In such customs the leaf-clad person appears to {p275} personify vegetation, and the drenching of him or her with water is certainly an imitation of rain. The words of the Servian song, however, taken in connexion with the constant movement which the chief actress in the performance seems expected to keep up, points to some comparison of the girl or her companions to clouds moving through the sky. This again reminds us of the odd quivering movement kept up by the Australian rain-maker, who, in his disguise of white down, may perhaps represent a cloud.[920] At Poona in India, when rain is needed, the boys dress up one of their number in nothing but leaves and call him King of Rain (Mrüj raja). Then they go round to every house in the village, where the householder or his wife sprinkles the Rain King with water, and gives the party food of various kinds. When they have thus visited all the houses, they strip the Rain King of his leafy robes and feast upon what they have gathered.[921]
Rain-making in Armenia.
Rain-making in Palestine and Moab.
Similar rain-charms are practised in Armenia, except that there the representative of vegetation is an effigy or doll, not a person. The children dress up a broomstick as a girl and carry it from house to house. Before every house they sing a song, of which the following is one version:—
Nurin, Nurin is come,
The wondrous maiden is come.