In the “hunting of the wren,” and the procession with the man clad in a cow-skin, there is nothing to shew that the customs in question have any relation to agriculture. So far as appears, they may date from a time before the invention of husbandry when animals were revered as divine in themselves, not merely as divine because they embodied the corn-spirit; and the analogy of the Gilyak procession of the bear and the Indian procession of the snake is in favour of assigning the corresponding European customs to this very early date. On the other hand, there are certain European processions of animals, or of men disguised as animals, which may perhaps be purely agricultural in their origin; in other words, the animals which figure in them may have been from the first nothing but representatives of the corn-spirit conceived in animal shape. Examples of such dramatic and at the same time religious rites have been collected by W. Mannhardt, who says of them in general: “Not only on the harvest field and on the threshing-floor but also quite apart from them people loved to represent the corn-spirit dramatically, especially in solemn processions in spring and about the winter solstice, whereby they meant to depict the return of the beneficent powers of summer to the desolate realm of nature.”[958] Thus, for example, in country districts of Bohemia it is, or used to be, customary during the last days of the Carnival for young men to go about in procession from house to house collecting gratuities. Usually a man or boy is swathed from head to foot in pease-straw and wrapt round in straw-ropes: thus attired he goes by the name of the Shrovetide or Carnival Bear (Fastnachtsbär) and is led from house to house to the accompaniment of music and singing. In every house he dances with [pg 326] the girls, the maids, and the housewife herself, and drinks to the health of the good man, the good wife, and the girls. For this performance the mummer is regaled with food by the good wife, while the good man puts money in his box. When the mummers have gone the round of the village, they betake themselves to the ale-house, whither also all the peasants repair with their wives; “for at Shrovetide, but especially on Shrove Tuesday, every one must dance, if the flax, the vegetables, and the corn are to thrive; and the more and the higher they dance, the greater the blessing which the people expect to crown their exertions.” In the Leitmeritz district the Shrovetide Bear, besides being wrapt in straw, sometimes wears a bear's mask to emphasise his resemblance to the animal. In the Czech villages the housewives pluck the pease-straw and other straw from the Shrovetide Bear and put it in the nests of their geese, believing that the geese will lay more eggs and hatch their broods better for the addition of this straw to their nests. For a similar purpose in the Saaz district the women put the straw of the Shrovetide Bear in the nests of their hens.[959] In these customs the dancing for the express purpose of making the crops grow high,[960] and the use of the straw to make the geese and hens lay more eggs, sufficiently prove that the Shrovetide Bear is conceived to represent the spirit of fertility both animal and vegetable; and we may reasonably conjecture that the dances of the mummer with the women and girls are especially intended to convey to them the fertilising powers of the spirit whom the mummer personates.[961]
The Oats-goat, the Pease-bear, etc. The Yule-goat in Sweden.
In some parts of Bohemia the straw-clad man in these Shrovetide processions is called, not the Bear, but the Oats-goat, and he wears horns on his head to give point to the name.[962] These different names and disguises indicate that in some places the corn-spirit is conceived as a bear and in others as a goat. Many examples of the conception of the corn-spirit as a goat have already been cited;[963] the conception of him as a bear seems to be less common. In the neighbourhood of Gniewkowo, in Prussian Lithuania, the two ideas are combined, for on Twelfth Day a man wrapt in pease-straw to represent a Bear and another wrapt in oats-straw to represent a Goat go together about the village; they imitate the actions of the two animals and perform dances, for which they receive a present in every house.[964] At Marburg in Steiermark the corn-spirit figures now as a wolf and now as a bear. The man who gave the last stroke at threshing is called the Wolf. All the other men flee from the barn, and wait till the Wolf comes forth; whereupon they pounce on him, wrap him in straw to resemble a wolf, and so lead him about the village. He keeps the name of Wolf till Christmas, when he is wrapt in a goat's skin and led from house to house as a Pease-bear at the end of a rope.[965] In this custom the dressing of the mummer in a goat's skin seems to mark him out as the representative of a goat; so that here the mythical fancy of the people apparently hesitates between a goat, a bear, and a wolf as the proper embodiment of the corn-spirit. In Scandinavia the conception of the spirit as a goat who appears at Christmas (Julbuck) appears to be common. Thus, for example, in Bergslagshärad (Sweden) it used to be customary at Christmas to lead about a man completely wrapt in corn-straw and wearing a goat's horns on his head: he personated the Yule-goat.[966] In some parts of Sweden a regular feature of the little Christmas drama is a pretence of slaughtering the Yule-goat, who, however, comes to life again. The actor, [pg 328] hidden by a coverlet made of skins and wearing a pair of formidable horns, is led into the room by two men, who make believe to slaughter him, while they sing verses referring to the mantles of various colours, red, blue, white, and yellow, which they laid on him, one after the other. At the conclusion of the song, the Yule-goat, after feigning death, jumps up and skips about to the amusement of the spectators.[967] In Willstad after supper on Christmas evening, while the people are dancing “the angel dance” for the sake of ensuring a good crop of flax, some long stalks of the Yule straw, either of wheat or rye, are made up into the likeness of a goat, which is thrown among the dancers with the cry, “Catch the Yule-goat!” The custom in Dalarne is similar, except that there the straw-animal goes by the name of the Yule-ram.[968] In these customs the identification of the Yule-goat or the Yule-ram with the corn-spirit seems unmistakable. As if to clinch the argument it is customary in Denmark and Sweden to bake cakes of fine meal at Christmas in the form of goats, rams, or boars. These are called Yule-goats, Yule-rams, or Yule-boars; they are often made out of the last sheaf of corn at harvest and kept till sowing-time, when they are partly mixed with the seed-corn and partly eaten by the people and the plough-oxen in the hope thereby of securing a good harvest.[969] It would seem scarcely possible to represent the identification of the corn-spirit with an animal, whether goat, ram, or boar, more graphically; for the last corn cut at harvest is regularly supposed to house the corn-spirit, who is accordingly caught, kept through the winter in the shape of an animal, and then mixed with the seed in spring to quicken the grain before it is committed to the ground. Examples of the corn-spirit conceived as a wether and a boar have met us in a preceding part of this work.[970] The pretence of killing the Yule-goat and bringing him to life again was probably in origin a magical rite to ensure the rebirth of the corn-spirit in spring.
The Straw-bear at Whittlesey.
In England a custom like some of the preceding still prevails at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire on the Tuesday [pg 329] after Plough Monday, as I learn from an obliging communication of Professor G. C. Moore Smith of Sheffield University. He writes: “When I was at Whittlesey yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting a ‘Straw-bear,’ if not two, in the street. I had not been at Whittlesey on the day for nearly forty years, and feared the custom had died out. In my boyhood the Straw-bear was a man completely swathed in straw, led by a string by another and made to dance in front of people's houses, in return for which money was expected. This always took place on the Tuesday following Plough-Monday. Yesterday the Straw-bear was a boy, and I saw no dancing. Otherwise there was no change.”[971]
The ceremonies of Plough Monday in England.
A comparison of this English custom with the similar Continental customs which have been described above, raises a presumption that the Straw-bear, who is thus led about from house to house, represents the corn-spirit bestowing his blessing on every homestead in the village. This interpretation is strongly confirmed by the date at which the ceremony takes place. For the date is the day after Plough Monday, and it can hardly be doubted that the old popular celebration of Plough Monday has a direct reference to agriculture. Plough Monday is the first Monday of January after Twelfth Day. On that day it used to be the custom in various parts of England for a band of sturdy swains to drag a gaily decorated plough from house to house and village to village, collecting contributions which were afterwards spent in rustic revelry at a tavern. The men who drew the plough were called Plough Bullocks; they wore their shirts over their coats, and bunches of ribbons flaunted from their hats and persons. Among them there was always one who personated a much bedizened old woman called Bessy; under his gown he formerly had a bullock's tail fastened to him behind, but this appendage was afterwards discarded. He skipped, danced and cut capers, and carried a money-box soliciting contributions from the onlookers. Some of the band, in addition to their ribbons, “also wore small bunches of corn in their hats, from which [pg 330] the wheat was soon shaken out by the ungainly jumping which they called dancing. Occasionally, if the winter was severe, the procession was joined by threshers carrying their flails, reapers bearing their sickles, and carters with their long whips, which they were ever cracking to add to the noise, while even the smith and the miller were among the number, for the one sharpened the plough-shares and the other ground the corn; and Bessy rattled his box and danced so high that he shewed his worsted stockings and corduroy breeches; and very often, if there was a thaw, tucked up his gown skirts under his waistcoat, and shook the bonnet off his head, and disarranged the long ringlets that ought to have concealed his whiskers.” Sometimes among the mummers there was a Fool, who wore the skin of a calf with the tail hanging down behind, and wielded a stick with an inflated bladder tied to it, which he applied with rude vigour to the heads and shoulders of the human team. Another mummer generally wore a fox's skin in the form of a hood with the tail dangling on his back. If any churl refused to contribute to the money-box, the plough-bullocks put their shoulders to the plough and ploughed up the ground in front of his door.[972]
The object of the dances on Plough Monday is probably to ensure the growth of the corn.
The clue to the meaning of these curious rites is probably furnished by the dances or rather jumps of the men who wore bunches of corn in their hats. When we remember how often on the Continent about the same time of year the peasants dance and jump for the express purpose [pg 331] of making the crops grow tall, we may conjecture with some probability that the intention of the dancers on Plough Monday was similar; the original notion, we may suppose, was that the corn would grow that year just as high as the dancers leaped. If that was so, we need not wonder at the agility displayed on these occasions by the yokels in general and by Bessy in particular. What stronger incentive could they have to exert themselves than the belief that the higher they leaped into the air the higher would sprout the corn-stalks? In short, the whole ceremony was probably a magical rite intended to procure a good crop. The principle on which it rested was the familiar one of homoeopathic or imitative magic: by mimicking the act of ploughing and the growth of the corn the mummers hoped to ensure the success of the real ploughing, which was soon to take place.
The Straw-bear a representative of the corn-spirit.