somepoint210
04.10.05, 20:22
(...)Ceremonies of the same sort are observed at Mid-Lent in Silesia. Thus in
many places the grown girls with the help of the young men dress up a straw
figure with women’s clothes and carry it out of the village towards the
setting sun. At the boundary they strip it of its clothes, tear it in pieces,
and scatter the fragments about the fields. This is called "Burying Death." As
they carry the image out, they sing that they are about to bury Death under an
oak, that he may depart from the people. Sometimes the song runs that they are
bearing Death over hill and dale to return no more. In the Polish
neighbourhood of Gross-Strehlitz the puppet is called Goik. It is carried on
horseback and thrown into the nearest water. The people think that the
ceremony protects them from sickness of every sort in the coming year. In the
districts of Wohlau and Guhrau the image of Death used to be thrown over the
boundary of the next village. But as the neighbours feared to receive the
ill-omened figure, they were on the look-out to repel it, and hard knocks were
often exchanged between the two parties. In some Polish parts of Upper Silesia
the effigy, representing an old woman, goes by the name of Marzana, the
goddess of death. It is made in the house where the last death occurred, and
is carried on a pole to the boundary of the village, where it is thrown into a
pond or burnt. At Polkwitz the custom of "Carrying out Death" fell into
abeyance; but an outbreak of fatal sickness which followed the intermission of
the ceremony induced the people to resume it(...)
Co myslicie o tym opisie?
