where a mock court was waiting to try him. A great crowd followed the cart. After a formal trial the straw man was condemned to
death and fastened to a stake on the execution ground. The young men with bandaged eyes tried to stab him with a spear. He who
succeeded became king and his sweetheart queen. The straw man was known as the Goliath.
In a parish of Denmark it used to be the custom at Whitsuntide to dress up a little girl as the Whitsun-bride and a little boy as her
groom. She was decked in all the finery of a grownup bride, and wore a crown of the freshest flowers of spring on her head. Her
groom was as gay as flowers, ribbons, and knots could make him. The other children adorned themselves as best they could with the
yellow flowers of the trollius and caltha. Then they went in great state from farmhouse to farmhouse, two little girls walking at the
head of the procession as bridesmaids, and six or eight outriders galloping ahead on hobby-horses to announce their coming. Contri-
butions of eggs, butter, loaves, cream, coffee, sugar, and tallow-candles were received and conveyed away in baskets. When they had
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made the round of the farms, some of the farmers' wives helped to arrange the wedding feast, and the children danced merrily in clogs on the stamped clay floor till the sun rose and the birds began to sing. All this is now a thing of the past. Only the old folks still
remember the little Whitsun-bride and her mimic pomp.
We have seen that in Sweden the ceremonies associated elsewhere with May Day or Whitsuntide commonly take place at Midsum-
mer. Accordingly we find that in some parts of the Swedish province of Blekinge they still choose a Midsummer's Bride, to whom
the "church coronet" is occasionally lent. The girl selects for herself a Bridegroom, and a collection is made for the pair, who for the
time being are looked on as man and wife. The other youths also choose each his bride. A similar ceremony seems to be still kept up
in Norway.
In the neighbourhood of Briancon (Dauphine) on May Day the lads wrap up in green leaves a young fellow whose sweetheart has deserted him or married another. He lies down on the ground and feigns to be asleep. Then a girl who likes him, and would marry him, comes and wakes him, and raising him up offers him her arm and a flag. So they go to the alehouse, where the pair lead off the dancing. But they must marry within the year, or they are treated as old bachelor and old maid, and are debarred the company
of the young folks. The lad is called the Bridegroom of the month of May. In the alehouse he puts off his garment of leaves, out
of which, mixed with flowers, his partner in the dance makes a nosegay, and wears it at her breast next day, when he leads her again
to the alehouse. Like this is a Russian custom observed in the district of Nerechta on the Thursday before Whitsunday. The girls go
out into a birch-wood, wind a girdle or band round a stately birch, twist its lower branches into a wreath, and kiss each other in pairs
through the wreath. The girls who kiss through the wreath call each other gossips. Then one of the girls steps forward, and mimick-
ing a drunken man, flings herself on the ground, rolls on the grass, and feigns to fall fast asleep. Another girl wakens the pretended
sleeper and kisses him; then the whole bevy trips singing through the wood to twine garlands, which they throw into the water. In
the fate of the garlands floating on the stream they read their own. Here the part of the sleeper was probably at one time played by a
lad. In these French and Russian customs we have a forsaken bridegroom, in the following a forsaken bride. On Shrove Tuesday the
Slovenes of Oberkrain drag a straw puppet with joyous cries up and down the village; then they throw it into the water or burn it,
and from the height of the flames they judge of the abundance of the next harvest. The noisy crew is followed by a female masker,
who drags a great board by a string and gives out that she is a forsaken bride.
Viewed in the light of what has gone before, the awakening of the forsaken sleeper in these ceremonies probably represents the revival of vegetation in spring. But it is not easy to assign their respective parts to the forsaken bridegroom and to the girl who wakes him from his slumber. Is the sleeper the leafless forest or the bare earth of winter? Is the girl who awakens him the fresh verdure or the genial sunshine of spring? It is hardly possible, on the evidence before us, to answer these questions.
In the Highlands of Scotland the revival of vegetation in spring used to be graphically represented on St. Bride's Day, the first of
February. Thus in the Hebrides "the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats, and dress it up in women's ap-
parel, put it in a large basket and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call Briid's bed; and then the mistress and servants cry three
times, 'Briid is come, Briid is welcome.' This they do just before going to bed, and when they rise in the morning they look among
the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there; which if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and
prosperous year, and the contrary they take as an ill omen." The same custom is described by another witness thus: "Upon the
night before Candlemas it is usual to make a bed with corn and hay, over which some blankets are laid, in a part of the house, near
the door. When it is ready, a person goes out and repeats three times, ... 'Bridget, Bridget, come in; thy bed is ready.' One or more
candles are left burning near it all night." Similarly in the Isle of Man "on the eve of the first of February, a festival was formerly
kept, called, in the Manks language, Laa'l Breeshey, in honour of the Irish lady who went over to the Isle of Man to receive the veil
from St. Maughold. The custom was to gather a bundle of green rushes, and standing with them in the hand on the threshold of the
door, to invite the holy Saint Bridget to come and lodge with them that night. In the Manks language, the invitation ran thus: 'Brede,
Brede, tar gys my thie tar dyn thie ayms noght Foshil jee yn dorrys da Brede, as lhig da Brede e heet staigh.' In English: 'Bridget,
Bridget, come to my house, come to my house to-night. Open the door for Bridget, and let Bridget come in.' After these words
were repeated, the rushes were strewn on the floor by way of a carpet or bed for St. Bridget. A custom very similar to this was also
observed in some of the Out-Isles of the ancient Kingdom of Man." In these Manx and Highland ceremonies it is obvious that St.
Bride, or St. Bridget, is an old heathen goddess of fertility, disguised in a threadbare Christian cloak. Probably she is no other than
Brigit, the Celtic goddess of fire and apparently of the crops.
Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not directly represented, is implied by naming the human representa-
tive of the spirit, "the Bride," and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys
go about carrying a May-tree or leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a
bride with a great nosegay in her hair. They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a present
and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something they will themselves have something the whole year through; but
if they give her nothing they will themselves have nothing. In some parts of Westphalia