Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/472

464 Before, however, we refer to this prehistoric ritual, let us consider another distinct factor in the problem. The Hallaton festival has preserved one feature, which is not mentioned in connection with the Leicester custom, the "Bottle-kicking". The "dummy-bottle", be it remembered, is simply a short log of wood; and hence the custom may be similar to many of those observed so generally throughout Europe, in which the image of Death or Winter is said to be "carried out" in the Spring of the year. The essence of these customs consists in a figure of straw, a wooden box, or a log of wood, being borne out of the village, and either thrown away or drowned, or sawn through the middle, or burnt, or torn to pieces in a field. The figure which represents Death is often carried to the boundary of the village, as in the Hallaton custom, where it is sometimes pitched over the border, in which case the youth of the next parish resent the intrusion, and the two neighbouring villages come to blows about it ; sometimes the image is only taken to the border of the parish, and there destroyed. The nature of the rivalry between the Hallatonians and the men of Medbourne, which seems to point to some ancient feud not unknown in the history of adjacent parishes, presents a difficulty in the way of this interpretation of the bottle-kicking; since the object of each parish is to obtain the image, not, as we should expect, to keep it away. This paradox is possibly capable of explanation upon the following grounds: The figure of Death (as it is called), as soon as its sacrifice is completed by its being thrown into