Now we’ve vanquish’d Death,
And Summer’s return ensured:
Were Death still unsubdued,
How much had we endured!
But of late years the spirit of this festival has disappeared. Lately, winter was uncouthly shaped of wood, and being covered with straw, was nailed against a large wheel, and the straw being set on fire, the apparatus was rolled down a steep hill! Agreeably to the intention of its inventors, the blazing wheel was by degrees knocked to pieces, against the precipices below, and then—winter’s effigy, to the admiration of the multitude, split into a thousand fiery fragments. This custom too, merely from the danger attending it, quickly fell into disuse; but still a shadow of the original festivity, which it was meant to commemorate, is preserved amongst the people of Eisenach. “Although” says the writer of these particulars, “we find winter no longer sent into banishment, as in former times, yet an attempt is made to represent and conciliate spring by offerings of nosegays and sprays of evergreen, adorned with birds or eggs, emblematical of the season.” Probably the latter usages may not have been consequent upon the decline of the former, but were coeval in their origin, and are the only remains of ancient customs peculiar to the season.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Lent Lily. Narcissus Pseudonarcissus multiplex.
Dedicated to St. Colette.
March 7.
St. Thomas Aquinas, A. D. 1274. Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas, A. D. 203. St. Paul, Anchoret.
St. Perpetua.
This saint is in the church of England calendar. She was martyred under the emperor Severus in 205.