and then threw it into a pool, while they sang, “We carry the old Death out behind the herdsman’s old house; we have got Summer, and Kroden’s (?) power is destroyed.”[1] In one village of Thüringen (Dobschwitz near Gera), the ceremony of “Driving out Death” is still annually observed on the 1st of March. The young people make up a figure of straw or the like materials, dress it in old clothes which they have begged from the houses in the village, and carry it out and throw it into the river. On returning to the village they announce the fact to the people, and receive eggs and other victuals as a reward. In other villages of Thüringen, in which the population was originally Slavonic, the carrying out of the puppet is accompanied with the singing of a song, which begins, “Now we carry Death out of the village and Spring into the village.”[2] In Bohemia the children go out with a straw-man, representing Death, to the end of the village, where they burn it, singing—
“Now carry we Death out of the village,
The new Summer into the village.
Welcome dear Summer,
Green little corn!”[3]
At Tabor (Bohemia) the figure of Death is carried out of the town and flung from a high rock into the water, while they sing—
“Death swims on the water,
Summer will soon be here,
We carried Death away for you.
We brought the Summer.
And do thou, O holy Marketa,
Give us a good year
For wheat and for rye.”[4]
