this symbolic series while it has its own special sense and place in dream-like sexual symbolism.
Nuts are northern symbols of fruitfulness and are distinguished as such ornament on the Christmas tree. I have met them also with quite the same significance in a dream of a patient with mental disease. The following example illustrates the twig as a masculine sexual symbol.
Hoffmann-Krayer[1] relates of the shrove-tide customs in Switzerland: "In general these (Shrove-tide customs) are still marked by sexual excesses, that originally probably proceeded from a symbolic act, which in the spring, similar to the awaking of the nature spirit of the plant world through different kinds of ceremonials, should bring about human fruitfulness.[2] The whipping of women or virgins with a twig or a bush, was a common action in all of these customs."
The author cites the following passage from the "Fast of Montanus" (Carmelite monk in Mantua, 1448—1516).
And with long straps, cut from odoriferous goatskin
They lashed the palms of young women, whom by such beating
Pleasing the god, they believed to assist in childbirth.
Mannhardt brings more material (Der Baumkultus, 1875, p. 251). He calls this the "stroke with the branch of life." Besides there may be connected with these views the present-day custom of holding a wedding in shrove-tide.
The author relates further of the widespread similar custom of single women sitting on the plough to be drawn about and of the so-called "Giritzenmoos" excursion. The old maids, in person or as dummies, are taken to a moor (Torfmoos) for punishment of their sterility, where they must live transformed into plovers (Giritze), which at this time are found in those regions. In several other articles in the same archives attention is drawn to the relation of this custom to the Danae saga.
"In the Frick valley (Switzerland) following a wedding celebration wine is poured in the lap of the maidens probably as a promise of fruitfulness."
