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We carried Death out of the village,
We are carrying Summer into the village."

In many Silesian villages the figure of Death, after being treated
with respect, is stript of its clothes and flung with curses into
the water, or torn to pieces in a field. Then the young folk repair
to a wood, cut down a small fir-tree, peel the trunk, and deck it
with festoons of evergreens, paper roses, painted egg-shells, motley
bits of cloth, and so forth. The tree thus adorned is called Summer
or May. Boys carry it from house to house singing appropriate songs
and begging for presents. Among their songs is the following:

"We have carried Death out,
We are bringing the dear Summer back,
The Summer and the May
And all the flowers gay."

Sometimes they also bring back from the wood a prettily adorned
figure, which goes by the name of Summer, May, or the Bride; in the
Polish districts it is called Dziewanna, the goddess of spring.
At Eisenach on the fourth Sunday in Lent young people used to fasten
a straw-man, representing Death, to a wheel, which they trundled to
the top of a hill.


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