Bathing is practised as a rain-charm in some parts of Southern and
Western Russia. Sometimes after service in church the priest in his
robes has been thrown down on the ground and drenched with water by
his parishioners. Sometimes it is the women who, without stripping
off their clothes, bathe in crowds on the day of St. John the
Baptist, while they dip in the water a figure made of branches,
grass, and herbs, which is supposed to represent the saint. In
Kursk, a province of Southern Russia, when rain is much wanted, the
women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or
souse him from head to foot. Later on we shall see that a passing
stranger is often taken for a deity or the personification of some
natural power. It is recorded in official documents that during a
drought in 1790 the peasants of Scheroutz and Werboutz collected all
the women and compelled them to bathe, in order that rain might
fall. An Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into
the water and drench her. The Arabs of North Africa fling a holy
man, willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy for drought.
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