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In
short we are driven to regard the expulsion of Death and the
bringing in of Summer as, in some cases at least, merely another
form of that death and revival of the spirit of vegetation in spring
which we saw enacted in the killing and resurrection of the Wild
Man. The burial and resurrection of the Carnival is probably another
way of expressing the same idea. The interment of the representative
of the Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to
possess a quickening and fertilising influence like that ascribed to
the effigy of Death. The Esthonians, indeed, who carry the straw
figure out of the village in the usual way on Shrove Tuesday, do not
call it the Carnival, but the Wood-spirit (_Metsik_), and they
clearly indicate the identity of the effigy with the wood-spirit by
fixing it to the top of a tree in the wood, where it remains for a
year, and is besought almost daily with prayers and offerings to
protect the herds; for like a true wood-spirit the _Metsik_ is a
patron of cattle. Sometimes the _Metsik_ is made of sheaves of corn.


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