At
Delmenhorst, in Oldenburg, it used to be the custom to cut down two
trees, plant them in the ground side by side, and pile twelve
tar-barrels against each. Brush-wood was then heaped about the
trees, and on the evening of Easter Saturday the boys, after rushing
about with blazing bean-poles in their hands, set fire to the whole.
At the end of the ceremony the urchins tried to blacken each other
and the clothes of grown-up people. In the Altmark it is believed
that as far as the blaze of the Easter bonfire is visible, the corn
will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break
out. At Braunr?de, in the Harz Mountains, it was the custom to burn
squirrels in the Easter bonfire. In the Altmark, bones were burned
in it.
Near Forchheim, in Upper Franken, a straw-man called the Judas used
to be burned in the churchyards on Easter Saturday. The whole
village contributed wood to the pyre on which he perished, and the
charred sticks were afterwards kept and planted in the fields on
Walpurgis Day (the first of May) to preserve the wheat from blight
and mildew.
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