This ascription of a
life-giving virtue to the figure of Death is put beyond a doubt by
the custom, observed in some places, of taking pieces of the straw
effigy of Death and placing them in the fields to make the crops
grow, or in the manger to make the cattle thrive. Thus in
Spachendorf, a village of Austrian Silesia, the figure of Death,
made of straw, brushwood, and rags, is carried with wild songs to an
open place outside the village and there burned, and while it is
burning a general struggle takes place for the pieces, which are
pulled out of the flames with bare hands. Each one who secures a
fragment of the effigy ties it to a branch of the largest tree in
his garden, or buries it in his field, in the belief that this
causes the crops to grow better. In the Troppau district of Austrian
Silesia the straw figure which the boys make on the fourth Sunday in
Lent is dressed by the girls in woman's clothes and hung with
ribbons, necklace, and garlands. Attached to a long pole it is
carried out of the village, followed by a troop of young people of
both sexes, who alternately frolic, lament, and sing songs.
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