564: 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of a tree. In the blithe spring-time, when the 

 plant-world has awakened from its winter sleep, 

 the May-tree, the head of the family to which our 

 May-pole belongs, is sought for in the forest all 

 over Northern Europe, is carted away in triumph, 

 and, decked with ribbons and other bravery, is 

 solemnly planted on the village green, or beside 

 the peasant's house. With the summer heats come 

 other feasts, in which trees play a leading part, 

 and, when autumn gilds the fields, the last harvest- 

 wagon is adorned with a tree gayly decked and 

 religiously honored. When a house is finished, a 

 similar tree is placed upon the roof; when a wed- 

 ding takes place, another is set up before the door 

 of the newly-married couple. And when the short 

 winter day begins to lengthen, the Christmas-tree 

 plays its cheery part — a tree which, Dr. Mann- 

 hardt observes, has now become an especially 

 German institution, and follows German emigrants 

 over land and sea to the New World, but which, 

 at the beginning of the present century, was known 

 but to, comparatively speaking, few Germans ; just 

 as it remained till about 1830 all but unknown to 

 Hungary, and was unfamiliar later still to England 

 and France, till its observance received an impulse 

 in those countries from the loving hands of Prince 

 Albert and the Duchess Helen of Orleans. Its 

 origin is plainly heathenish, though it has been 

 claimed for the Christian Church, on the ground 

 that the 24th of December is consecrated to Adam 

 and Eve ; and a well-known legend relates how 

 Adam brought from paradise a fruit or slip from 

 the Tree of Knowledge, from which eventually 

 sprang the tree from which the cross was made; 

 while another states that a branch from the Tree 

 of Life was planted above Adam's grave, and be- 

 came the tree from which Christ plucked the 

 fruits of Redemption. 



But it was not only under the forms of trees 

 or plants that the human mind symbolized the 

 Spirit of Growth or Vegetation, the genius of 

 spring-tide and harvest-tide. A natural tendency 

 toward imagining that supernatural beings are 

 of like forms to our own led to such spirits being 

 represented under human shapes. Of these, many 

 still survive, though many others have perished. 

 Sometimes these figures were single; sometimes 

 they went in pairs. Of the single figures, the best 

 known to ourselves is the Jack-in-the-Green — our 

 chief representative of the numerous beings who, 

 in various lands, when spring-tide comes, are 

 robed in dresses made of herbs and boughs. Of 

 the coupled symbols of this kind, the most famil- 

 iar to English minds, not long ago, were the King 

 and Queen of May. For in Old England the May- 



King played a prominent- part in May revels, 

 though now we are generally accustomed to think 

 only of the May-Queen. But in foreign countries 

 there still exist all sorts of May-kings and May- 

 counts, and the Mairitt is still kept up in Ger- 

 many, though among ourselves the good old Eng- 

 lish custom of "going a-Maying" has fallen into 

 disrepute, and has been handed over to chimney- 

 sweeps, or, still worse, to negro minstrels. 1 With 

 these May-ridings, and with the somewhat similar 

 midsummer fire-festivals, are connected a number 

 of customs. Most remarkable among them is that 

 of carrying out to the forest a figure made of wood, 

 straw, or some other like material, which is sol- 

 emnly destroyed either by water or by fire. Similar 

 puppets are thus drowned or burned at various 

 seasons of the year. That which is thus destroyed 

 in spring seems, at least in Slavonic lands, to be a 

 personification of the winter. But in that which 

 is burned at midsummer, Dr. Mannhardt is in- 

 clined to see an image of the summer vegetation, 

 parching under the blazing sun. The flinging of 

 a puppet into water may be a rite connected with 

 rain-producing spells, especially as in times of 

 drought the peasants in many Slavonic lands are 

 in the habit of leading about through their vil- 

 lages a youth or girl robed in flowers and foliage, 

 who is afterward solemnly stripped and sluiced 

 with abundant water. 



Among the most remarkable features of this 

 rite of destroying a straw-man or other puppet 

 — a rite to which an historical air has been given 

 among us by our burning of Guy Fawkes, a re- 

 ligious meaning among the southern Catholics by 

 their hanging of Judas Iscariot — are the traces 

 which they retain in some lands of an ancient 

 custom of human sacrifice. To this day, in re- 

 mote districts, especially in Russia, not only are 

 fruits and flowers destroyed along with the figure 

 which seems to be an effigy of either the genius 

 or the enemy of vegetation, but living creatures 

 also are put to death. Thus, in olden days, the 

 Parisians were diverted by the screams of a score 

 of cats, which were burned to death in the mid- 

 summer St. John's fire on the Place de Greve. 

 And thus, at the present day, the inhabitants of 

 Luchon, in the Pyrenees, extract great delight 

 from the wrigglings of the snakes which, on St. 

 John's Eve, they throw into a fire which is lighted 

 under the auspices of the clergy. 2 For the clergy 



1 The blackening of faces at May-tide was an ancient 

 cnstom, much older than the story of the aristocratic 

 young sweep. 



2 See an account quoted by Dr. Mannhardt (whom 

 nothing seems to escape) from the Athenaeum of July 

 24. 1869. 



