The girls go out into a birch-wood, wind a girdle
or band round a stately birch, twist its lower branches into a
wreath, and kiss each other in pairs through the wreath. The girls
who kiss through the wreath call each other gossips. Then one of the
girls steps forward, and mimicking a drunken man, flings herself on
the ground, rolls on the grass, and feigns to fall fast asleep.
Another girl wakens the pretended sleeper and kisses him; then the
whole bevy trips singing through the wood to twine garlands, which
they throw into the water. In the fate of the garlands floating on
the stream they read their own. Here the part of the sleeper was
probably at one time played by a lad. In these French and Russian
customs we have a forsaken bridegroom, in the following a forsaken
bride. On Shrove Tuesday the Slovenes of Oberkrain drag a straw
puppet with joyous cries up and down the village; then they throw it
into the water or burn it, and from the height of the flames they
judge of the abundance of the next harvest. The noisy crew is
followed by a female masker, who drags a great board by a string and
gives out that she is a forsaken bride.
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