Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/101

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98
A BOOK OF FOLK-LORE

give a summary of facts connected with it. But prior to doing so, I will quote two accounts of similar usages in Bavaria from Ganghofer’s Oberland, 1884. The girl who is last in the driving out of the sheep is mocked by the youths, who make a man of straw and nail it up against the stall door. The girl seeks to defend herself with a bucket of water, but the youths also bring pails of water, and in the end all get thoroughly drenched. This takes place at Tegernsee on Whitsun Monday.

Elsewhere in Bavaria is performed the Santrigel ceremony. A boy or young man, on Whitsunday, is wrapped up in green boughs from head to foot, is seated on the leanest cow of the village, with a band going before him, and he is conveyed to the edge of a lake or river and is there thrown in. As on more than one occasion a Santrigel narrowly escaped drowning, the authorities forbade this; and the flinging into the river or lake is commuted into sousing with a bucket of water.

Both these examples represent a sacrifice to the goddess of the Spring, in which either a lad or a girl was ceremonially drowned. And in the Cornish example of the Neck, the lad flying with the Cornman and met by a pail of water thrown over him, leads us