the hollow on the mound, is supposed to revive, and to be endowed with a vivifying influence which is highly prized. Thus in Spachendorf (Austrian Silesia), the figure of Death is carried out to an open place outside the village, and there burned, and then a great struggle takes place for the pieces. Everyone who secures a fragment ties it to a branch of the tallest tree in his garden, or buries it in the ground. The same scramble for the fragments occurs in the Troppau district; and other instances in which a highly prized fertilising power is attributed to the figure of Death will be found in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough.[1]
I think, then, that, at any rate in default of a better explanation, we may class this Hallaton bottle-kicking with the widely-prevalent spring ceremonies I have mentioned.[2] Space will not allow me to carry the argument any further; but I will refer to the very elaborate and suggestive discussion of Mr. J. G. Frazer, in which he certainly makes out a very strong case for the view that this custom of "carrying out Death" is a survival of an ancient rite of sacrificing the Spirit of Vegetation in the spring of the year.[3] And if upon the evidence of analogy,
- ↑ Vol. i, pp. 267-68.
- ↑ I am not inclined to lay much stress upon the objection that most of these ceremonies occur not at Easter but in Mid-Lent; for we often find popular customs transferred from their old dates to those of proximate modern festivals. Thus the old Berkshire ceremony of "Wetting the Block" takes place in some parts of the county on the first Monday in Lent, and in others on Easter Monday (Dyer, p. 119). And a custom which survived until recent years at University College, Oxford, and which seems also to bear traces of this rite of "carrying out Death", actually took place on Easter Day (Dyer, p. 167). The Hallaton custom may possibly be analogous to that of "Riding the Black Lad", which also takes place on Easter Monday, at Astonunder-Lyne; in which case the effigy, after being carried round the town and shot at, is finally burned (Denham Tracts, vol. i, F.-L. S., 1891, p. 103.)
- ↑ Frazer, op. cit., ii, 206-208, etc. Mr. Frazer thinks that the practice of "carrying out Death" combines the two customs of killing the god and expelling evils annually by means of a scapegoat.
