If such was the real meaning of the ritual of Plough Monday, we may the more confidently assume that the Straw-bear who makes his appearance at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire on the day after Plough Monday represents indeed the corn-spirit. What could be more appropriate than for that beneficent being to manifest himself from house to house the very day after a magical ceremony had been performed to quicken the growth of the corn?
The rites of Plough Monday resemble the rites at the end of the Carnival in Thrace. Similar rites are performed at the same time by the Bulgarian peasants of Thrace. The intention of the rites is clearly to fertilise the ground.
The foregoing interpretation of the rites observed in England on Plough Monday tallies well with the explanation which I have given of the very similar rites annually performed at the end of the Carnival in Thrace.[973] The mock ploughing is probably practised for the same purpose in both cases, and what that purpose is may be safely inferred from the act of sowing and the offering of prayers for abundant crops which accompany and explain the Thracian ceremony. It deserves to be noted that ceremonies of the same sort and closely resembling those of Plough Monday are not confined to the Greek villages of Thrace but are observed also by the Bulgarians of that province at the same time, namely, on the Monday of the last week in Carnival. Thus at Malko-Tirnovsko, in the district of Adrianople, a procession of mummers goes through the streets on that day. [pg 332] The principal personages in it bear the names of the Kuker and Kukerica. The Kuker is a man clad in a goatskin. His face is blackened with soot and he wears on his head a high shaggy hat made of an entire skin. Bells jingle at his girdle, and in his hand he carries a club. The Kukerica, who sometimes goes by the name of Baba, that is, “Old Woman,” is a man disguised in petticoats with his face blackened. Other figures in the procession are young men dressed as girls, and girls dressed as men and wearing masks. Bears are represented by dogs wrapt in bearskins. A king, a judge, and other officials are personated by other mummers; they hold a mock court and those whom they condemn receive a bastinado. Some of the maskers carry clubs; it is their duty to beat all who fall into their hands and to levy contributions from them. The play and gestures of the Kuker and Kukerica are wanton and lascivious: the songs and cries addressed to the Kuker are also very cynical. Towards evening two of the company are yoked to a plough, and the Kuker ploughs a few furrows, which he thereupon sows with corn. After sunset he puts off his disguise, is paid for his trouble, and carouses with his fellows. The people believe that the man who plays the part of Kuker commits a deadly sin, and the priests make vain efforts to abolish the custom. At the village of Kuria, in the district of Losengrad, the custom is in general the same, but there are some significant variations. The money collected by the mummers is used to buy wine, which is distributed among all the villagers at a banquet in the evening. On this occasion a cake in which an old coin has been baked is produced by the Kuker, broken into bits, and so divided among all present. If the bit with the coin in it falls to a farmer, then the crops will be good that year; but if it falls to a herdsman, then the cattle will thrive. Finally, the Kuker ploughs a small patch of ground, “bending his body to right and left in order to indicate symbolically the ears of corn bending under the weight of the grain.” The others lay hold of the man with whom the coin was found, bind him by the feet, and drag him over the land that has just been ploughed.[974] In these observances the [pg 333] intention of promoting the fertility of the ground is unmistakable; the ploughman's imitation of the cornstalks bending under their own weight is a simple case of homoeopathic or imitative magic, while the omens drawn from the occupation of the person who obtains the piece of cake with the coin in it indicate that the ceremony is designed to quicken the herds as well as the crops. We can hardly doubt that the same serious motive underlies the seemingly wanton gestures of the principal actors and explains the loose character of the songs and words which accompany the ceremony. Nor is it hard to divine the reason for dragging over the fresh furrows the man who is lucky enough to get the coin in the cake. He is probably looked on as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, and in that character is compelled to fertilise the ground by bodily contact with the newly-ploughed earth.
Similar customs are observed at the Carnival in Bulgaria.
Similar customs are observed at the Carnival not only by Bulgarian peasants in Thrace but also here and there in Bulgaria itself. In that country the leading personage of the masquerade is the Baba, that is, the Old Woman or Mother. The part is played by a man in woman's clothes; she, or rather he, wears no mask, but in many villages she carries a spindle with which she spins. The Kuker and the Kukerica also figure in the performance, but they are subordinate to the Old Woman or Mother. Their costume varies in different villages. Usually they are clad in skins with a girdle of lime-tree bark and five or six bells fastened to it; on their back they wear a hump made up of rags. But the principal feature in their attire consists of their masks, which represent the heads of animals and men in fantastic combinations, such as the horned head of a man or a bird, the head of a ram, a bull, and so on. Much labour is spent on the manufacture of these masks. Early in the morning of Cheese Monday (the Monday of the last week in Carnival) the mummers go about the village levying contributions. Towards noon they form a procession and go from house to house. In every house they dance a round dance, while the Old Woman spins. It is believed that if any house-holder contrives to carry off the Old Woman and secrete her, a blessing and prosperity will enter into his dwelling; [pg 334] but the maskers defend the Old Woman stoutly against all such attempts of individuals to appropriate her beneficent presence. After the dance the mummers receive gifts of money, eggs, meal, and so on. Towards evening a round dance is danced in the village square, and there the Old Woman yokes the Kuker and Kukerica to a plough, ploughs with it a small piece of ground, and sows the ground with corn. Next day the performers reassemble, sell the presents they had collected, and with the produce hold a feast in the house of the Old Woman. It is supposed that if strange maskers make their way into a village, fertility will be drawn away to the village from which they have come; hence the villagers resist an inroad of strange maskers at any price. In general the people believe that the masquerade is performed for the purpose of increasing the luck and fertility of the village.[975]
In all these cases the ceremonial ploughing and sowing are probably charms to ensure the growth of the crops.
In these Bulgarian rites, accordingly, we are not left to form conjectures as to the intention with which they are practised; that intention is plainly avowed, and it is no other than the one which we have inferred for the similar rites observed in Thrace at the same season and in England on Plough Monday. In all these cases it is reasonable to suppose that the real aim of the ceremonial ploughing and sowing of the ground is thereby, on the principles of homoeopathic or imitative magic, to ensure the growth of the corn on all the fields of the community. Perhaps we may go a step further and suggest that in the Bulgarian Old Woman or Mother, who guides the plough and sows the seed, and whose presence is believed to bring a blessing to any household that can contrive to appropriate her, we have the rustic prototype of Demeter, the Corn-Mother, who in the likeness of an Old Woman brought a blessing to the house of Celeus, king of Eleusis, and restored their lost fertility to the fallow Eleusinian fields. And in the pair of mummers, man and woman, who draw the plough, may we not discern the rude originals of Pluto and Persephone? If that is so, the gods of Greece are not wholly dead; they still hide their diminished heads in the cottages of the [pg 335] peasantry, to come forth on sunshine holidays and parade, with a simple but expressive pageantry, among a gazing crowd of rustics, at the very moment of the year when their help is most wanted by the husbandman.
Such rites no doubt date from a remote antiquity.
Be that as it may, these rites still practised by the peasantry at opposite ends of Europe, no doubt date from an extremely early age in the history of agriculture. They are probably far older than Christianity, older even than those highly developed forms of Greek religion with which ancient writers and artists have made us familiar, but which have been for so many centuries a thing of the past. Thus it happens that, while the fine flower of the religious consciousness in myth, ritual, and art is fleeting and evanescent, its simpler forms are comparatively stable and permanent, being rooted deep in those principles of common minds which bid fair to outlive all the splendid but transient creations of genius. It may be that the elaborate theologies, the solemn rites, the stately temples, which now attract the reverence or the wonder of mankind, are destined themselves to pass away like “all Olympus' faded hierarchy,” and that simple folk will still cherish the simple faiths of their nameless and dateless forefathers, will still believe in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, will still mumble the old spells and make the old magic passes, when the muezzin shall have ceased to call the faithful to prayer from the minarets of St. Sophia, and when the worshippers shall gather no more in the long-drawn aisles of Nôtre Dame and under the dome of St. Peter's.