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.[299] 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.[300] In the district of Duesseldorf the straw-man burned on
Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.[301] 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.[302] 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.[303] In the Val di
Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of
straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman,
and the ceremony "burning the Old Woman."[304]
Sec. 2. _The Easter Fires_
[Fire-festivals on Easter Eve. Custom in Catholic countries of kindling
a holy new fire at the church on Easter Saturday; marvellous properties
ascribed to the embers of the fire; the burning of Judas.
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