But the transference of the shirt
worn by the effigy of Death to the tree clearly indicates that the
tree is a kind of revivification, in a new form, of the destroyed
effigy. This comes out also in the Transylvanian and Moravian
customs: the dressing of a girl in the clothes worn by the Death,
and the leading her about the village to the same song which had
been sung when the Death was being carried about, show that she is
intended to be a kind of resuscitation of the being whose effigy has
just been destroyed. These examples therefore suggest that the Death
whose demolition is represented in these ceremonies cannot be
regarded as the purely destructive agent which we understand by
Death. If the tree which is brought back as an embodiment of the
reviving vegetation of spring is clothed in the shirt worn by the
Death which has just been destroyed, the object certainly cannot be
to check and counteract the revival of vegetation: it can only be to
foster and promote it. Therefore the being which has just been
destroyed--the so-called Death--must be supposed to be endowed with
a vivifying and quickening influence, which it can communicate to
the vegetable and even the animal world.
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