Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/228

 202 ''Bringing in tlic FlyT

The central feature of these agricultural festivals with which I have compared our " fly " custom, is the carrying in procession and slaughter of a live victim, part of which is eaten by each member of the community in order to bring him good luck for the coming year. The victim in this case must be the " fly," an insect of some kind, either a butterfly, as the author of Narcissus states, or a " crane-fly," as Wood's epithet of " Sir Cranion " suggests. A parallel for the carrying of an insect in procession and the setting up of a bower is afforded by the Danish custom mentioned by Grimm : "A quaint procession of the erewhile amazons of the spinning-wheel at Schleswig, for fetching in of a cantJiaris or niaykafer, with green boughs, whereat the town-hall of this place was decked out with greenery." ^^ \\_ must be remembered, too, that the German name for the cockchafer, " maikafer," i.e. "may-chafer" (cf. American "may-bug"), specially identifies the insect with May-tide, the season at which the " fly " ceremony took place.

The custom of dressing " Strowell " with flowers indicates that it was, or had once been, a " holy well." The intimate connection of our "fly" with this well is shown not only by the fact that the " fly " was brought in from thence ; but also by Wood's epithet of "Sir Cranion," the "crane-fly," which, according to a seventeenth-century work on ento- mology, was a " water-fly." ^^

A "holy well" with a guardian fly existed at Kirk- michael, Banffshire, in the eighteenth century. It was dedicated to St. Michael, and its waters possessed sovereign virtues. Here the "winged guardian under semblance of a fly was never absent from his duty." Those who wished to know the fate of sick relatives or friends visited the

^^ Teutonic Alythology of Jacob Grimm, trans, by J. S. Stallybrass, vol. ii., pp. 693-4.

1^ " A Water-fly, which men call from the length of the feet or shanks . . . Gruinam ; called therefore in English a Crane Fly." (T. Moufet, Insectoriiiii Theatriim, English ed. 1658, p. 943 ; quoted by J. ^lurray, A New English Dictionary.