|Festival of St. George, as the patron of horses, at Ertringen in Bavaria.| At Ertringen, in South Bavaria, there is a chapel of St. George, where a festival of the saint used to be held on April the twenty-fourth down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. From the whole neighbourhood people streamed thither on horseback and in waggons to take part in the ceremony. More than fourteen hundred riders are said to have been present on one occasion. The foundation of the chapel was attributed to the monastery of Holy Cross Vale (Heiligkreuztal), and the abbot and prior with their suite attended the festival in state mounted on white horses. A burgher of Ertringen had to ride as patron in the costume of St. George, whom he represented. He alone bestrode a fiery stallion. After the celebration of high mass the horses were blessed at the chapel. Then the procession of men on horseback moved round the common lands, winding up at the parish church, where it broke up.[[1086]] In many villages near Freiburg in Baden St. George is the patron of horses, and in some parts of Baden the saint’s day (April the twenty-third) is the season when cattle are driven out to pasture for the first time in spring.[[1087]]
|St. George’s Day among the Saxons and Roumanians of Transylvania.| The Saxons of Transylvania think that on the eve of St. George’s Day the witches ride on the backs of the cows into the farmyard, if branches of wild rosebushes or other thorny shrubs are not stuck over the gate of the yard to keep them out.[[1088]] Beliefs and practices of this sort are shared by the Roumanians of Transylvania. They hold that on St. George’s Day the witches keep their sabbath in sequestered spots, such as woodland glades, deserted farm-steadings, and the like. In Walachia green sods are laid on the window-sills and on the lintels of the doors to avert the uncanny crew. But in Transylvania the Roumanians, not content with setting a thorn-bush in the doorway of the house, keep watch and ward all night beside the cattle or elsewhere, to catch the witches who are at work stealing the milk from the cows. Here, as elsewhere, the day is above all the herdsman’s festival. It marks the beginning of spring; the shepherds are preparing to start for the distant pastures, and they listen with all their ears to some wiseacre who tells them how, if the milk should fail in the udders of the sheep, they have only to thrash the shepherd’s pouch, and every stroke will fall on the witch who is pumping the lost milk into her pails.[[1089]]
|St. George’s Day the herdsman’s festival among the Walachians.| The Walachians look on St. George’s Day as very holy; for they are mainly a pastoral folk, and St. George is the patron of herds and herdsmen. On that day also, as well as on the day before and the day after, the Walachian numbers his herd, beginning at one and counting continuously up to the total. This he never does at any other time of the year. On this day, too, he milks his sheep for the first time into vessels which have been carefully scoured and are wreathed with flowers. Then too a cake of white meal is baked in the shape of a ring, and is rolled on the ground in sight of the herd; and from the length of its course omens are drawn as to the good or bad luck of the cattle in their summer pastures. If the herd is owned by several men, they afterwards lay hold of the ring, and break it among them, and the one who gets the largest piece will have the best luck. The milk is made into a cheese which is divided; and the pieces of the cake are given to the shepherds. In like manner the wreaths of flowers which crowned the pails are thrown into the water, and from the way in which they float down-stream the shepherds presage good or evil fortune.[[1090]]
|St. George’s Day among the Bulgarians and South Slavs.| The Bulgarians seem to share the belief that cattle are especially exposed to the machinations of witches at this season, for it is a rule with them not to give away milk, butter, or cheese on the eve of St. George’s Day; to do so, they say, would be to give away the profit of the milch kine.[[1091]] They rise very early on the morning of this day, and wash themselves in the dew, that they may be healthy.[[1092]] It is said, too, that a regular sacrifice is still offered on St. George’s Day in Bulgaria. An old man kills a ram, while girls spread grass on which the blood is poured forth.[[1093]] The intention of the sacrifice may be to make the herbage grow abundantly in the pastures. Amongst the South Slavs the twenty-third of April, St. George’s Day, is the chief festival of the spring. The herdsman thinks that if his cattle are well on that day they will thrive throughout the year. As we have already seen,[[1094]] he crowns the horns of his cows with garlands of flowers to guard them against witchcraft, and in the evening the garlands are hung on the doors of the stalls, where they remain until the next St. George’s Day. Early in the morning of that day, when the herdsman drives the cows from the byres, the housewife takes salt in one hand and a potsherd with glowing coals in the other. She offers the salt to the cow, and the beast must step over the smouldering coals, on which various kinds of roses are smoking. This deprives the witches of all power to harm the cow. On the eve or the morning of the day old women cut thistles and fasten them to the doors and gates of the farm; and they make crosses with cow’s dung on the doors of the byres to ward off the witches. Many knock great nails into the doors, which is thought to be a surer preventive even than thistles. In certain districts the people cut thistles before sunrise and put some on each other’s heads, some on the fences, the windows, the doors, and some in the shape of wreaths round the necks of the cows, in order that the witches may be powerless to harm man and beast, house and homestead, throughout the year. If, nevertheless, a witch should contrive to steal through the garden fence and into the byre, it is all over with the cows. A good housewife will also go round her house and cattle-stalls early in the morning of the fateful day and sprinkle them with holy water. Another approved means of driving the witches away is furnished by the froth which is shot from the spokes of a revolving mill-wheel; for common-sense tells us that just as the froth flies from the wheel, so the witches will fly from our house, if only we apply the remedy in the right way. And the right way is this. On the eve of St. George’s Day you must send a child to fetch froth from the mill, three stones from three cross-roads, three twigs of a blackberry bush, three sprigs of beech, and three shoots of a wild vine. Then you insert the plants in a buttered roll, put the stones in the fire, boil the froth, toast the buttered roll over the glowing stones, and speak these words: “The blackberry twigs gather together, the beeches pull together, but the foam from the wheel shakes all evil away.” Do this, and you may take my word for it that no witch will be able to charm away the milk from your cows.[[1095]]
|Precautions of the same sort are taken against wolves and witches whenever the cattle are driven out to pasture for the first time in spring.| Thus on the whole the festival of St. George at the present day, like the Parilia of ancient Italy, is a ceremony intended to guard the cattle against their real and their imaginary foes, the wolves and the witches, at the critical season when the flocks and herds are driven out to pasture for the first time in spring. Precautions of the same sort are naturally taken by the superstitious herdsman whenever, the winter being over, he turns his herds out into the open for the first time, whether it be on St. George’s Day or not. Thus in Prussia and Lithuania, when the momentous morning broke, the herd-boy ran from house to house in the village, knocked at the windows, and cried: “Put out the fire, spin not, reel not, but drive the cattle out!” Meantime the herdsman had fetched sand from the church, which he strewed on the road by which the beasts must go from the farmyard. At the same time he laid a woodcutter’s axe in every doorway, with the sharp edge outwards, over which the cows had to step. Then he walked in front of them, speaking never a word, and paying no heed to the herd, which was kept together by the herd-boys alone. His thoughts were occupied by higher things, for he was busy making crosses, blessing the cattle, and murmuring prayers, till the pastures were reached. The axe in the doorway signified that the wolf should flee from the herd as from the sharp edge of the axe: the sand from the church betokened that the cattle should not disperse and wander in the meadows, but should keep as close together as people in church.[[1096]]
|Swedish observances at turning out the cattle to graze after their winter confinement.| In Sweden the cattle are confined almost wholly to their stalls during the long and dreary northern winter; and the first day in spring on which they are turned out into the forest to graze has been from time immemorial a great popular festival. The time of its celebration depends more or less on the mildness or severity of the season. For the most part it takes place about the middle of May. On the preceding evening bonfires are kindled everywhere in the forest, because so far as their flickering light extends the cattle will be safe from the attacks of wild beasts throughout the summer. For the same reason people go about the woods that night firing guns, blowing horns, and making all kinds of discordant noises. The mode of celebrating the festival, which in some places is called the feast of flowers, varies somewhat in different provinces. In Dalsland the cattle are driven home that day from pasture at noon instead of at evening. Early in the morning the herd-boy repairs with the herd to the forest, where he decks their horns with wreaths of flowers and provides himself with a wand of the rowan or mountain-ash. During his absence the girls pluck flowers, weave them into a garland, and hang it on the gate through which the cattle must pass on their return from the forest. When they come back, the herd-boy takes the garland from the gate, fastens it to the top of his wand, and marches with it at the head of his beasts to the hamlet. Afterwards the wand with the garland on it is set up on the muck-heap, where it remains all the summer. The intention of these ceremonies is not said, but on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that both the flowers and the rowan-wand are supposed to guard the cattle against witchcraft. A little later in the season, when the grass is well grown in the forest, most of the cattle are sent away to the säter, or summer pastures, of which every hamlet commonly has one or more. These are clearings in the woods, and may be many miles distant from the village. In Dalecarlia the departure usually takes place in the first week of June. It is a great event for the pastoral folk. An instinctive longing seems to awaken both in the people and the beasts. The preparations of the women are accompanied by the bleating of the sheep and goats and the lowing of the cattle, which make incessant efforts to break through the pens near the house where they are shut up. Two or more girls, according to the size of the herd, attend the cattle on their migration and stay with them all the summer. Every animal as it goes forth, whether cow, sheep, or goat, is marked on the brow with a cross by means of a tar-brush in order to protect it against evil spirits. But more dangerous foes lie in wait for the cattle in the distant pastures, where bears and wolves not uncommonly rush forth on them from the woods. On such occasions the herd-girls often display the utmost gallantry, belabouring the ferocious beasts with sticks, and risking their own lives in defence of the herds.[[1097]]
|These modern parallels throw light on some features of the Parilia.| The foregoing customs, practised down to modern times by shepherds and herdsmen with a full sense of their meaning, throw light on some features of the Parilia which might otherwise remain obscure. They seem to shew that when the Italian shepherd hung green boughs on his folds, and garlands on his doors, he did so in order to keep the witches from the ewes; and that in fumigating his flocks with sulphur and driving them over a fire of straw he sought to interpose a fiery barrier between them and the powers of evil, whether these were conceived as witches or mischievous spirits.
|Green George a personification of a spirit of trees or of vegetation in general.| But St. George is more than a patron of cattle. The mummer who dresses up in green boughs on the saint’s day and goes by the name of Green George[[1098]] clearly personifies the saint himself, and such a disguise is appropriate only to a spirit of trees or of vegetation in general. As if to make this quite clear, the Slavs of Carinthia carry a tree decked with flowers in the procession in which Green George figures; and the ceremonies in which the leaf-clad masker takes a part plainly indicate that he is thought to stand in intimate connexion with rain as well as with cattle. This counterpart of our Jack in the Green is known in some parts of Russia, and the Slovenes call him Green George. Dressed in leaves and flowers, he appears in public on St. George’s Day carrying a lighted torch in one hand and a pie in the other. Thus arrayed he goes out to the cornfields, followed by girls, who sing appropriate songs. A circle of brushwood is then lighted, and the pie is set in the middle of it. All who share in the ceremony sit down around the fire, and the pie is divided among them. The observance has perhaps a bearing on the cattle as well as on the cornfields, for in some parts of Russia when the herds go out to graze for the first time in spring a pie baked in the form of a sheep is cut up by the chief herdsman, and the bits are kept as a cure for the ills to which sheep are subject.[[1099]]
|“Ringing out the grass” on St. George’s Day.| At Schwaz, an old Tyrolese town in the lower valley of the Inn, young lads assemble on St. George’s Day, which is here the twenty-fourth of April, and having provided themselves with bells, both large and small, they go in procession ringing them to the various farms of the neighbourhood, where they are welcomed and given milk to drink. These processions, which take place in other parts of the Tyrol also, go by the name of “ringing out the grass” (Grasausläuten), and it is believed that wherever the bell-ringers come, there the grass grows and the crops will be abundant. This beneficial effect appears to be ascribed to the power of the bells to disperse the evil spirits, which are thought to be rampant on St. George’s Day. For the same purpose of averting demoniac influence at this time, people in Salzburg and the neighbouring districts of Upper Austria go in procession round the fields and stick palm branches or small crosses in them; also they fasten branches of the Prunus Padus, L., at the windows of the houses and cattle-stalls.[[1100]] In some parts of Germany the farmer looks to the height of his corn on St. George’s Day, expecting that it should then be high enough to hide a crow.[[1101]]
|St. George supposed to get barren women with child.| Even when we have said that St. George of Eastern Europe represents an old heathen deity of sheep, cattle, horses, wolves, vegetation, and rain, we have not exhausted all the provinces over which he is supposed to bear sway. According to an opinion which appears to be widely spread, he has the power of blessing barren women with offspring. This belief is clearly at the root of the South Slavonian custom, described above, whereby a childless woman hopes to become a mother by wearing a shirt which has hung all night on a fruitful tree on St. George’s Eve.[[1102]] Similarly, a Bulgarian wife who desires to have a child will strike off a serpent’s head on St. George’s Day, put a bean in its mouth, and lay the head in a hollow tree or bury it in the earth at a spot so far from the village that the crowing of the cocks cannot be heard there. If the bean buds, her wishes will be granted.[[1103]]