The effigy
is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts
that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year.
Being condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village,
shot, and burned upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and
the last bride must leap over it. In Oldenburg on the evening of
Shrove Tuesday people used to make long bundles of straw, which they
set on fire, and then ran about the fields waving them, shrieking,
and singing wild songs. Finally they burned a straw-man on the
field. In the district of D?sseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove
Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn. On the first Monday
after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a
little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls
carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.
In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday, a man used to be encased
in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped
quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children
thinking that it was the man who was being burned.
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