Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/102

80 on the roof of the house, to keep house and field from bad weather and injury.

It is hardly necessary to illustrate the custom of setting up a village May-tree or May-pole on May Day. One point only—the renewal of the village May-tree—requires to be noticed. In England the village May-pole seems as a rule, at least in later times, to have been permanent, not renewed from year to year. Sometimes, however, it was renewed annually. Thus, Borlase says of the Cornish people: “From towns they make incursions, on May-eve, into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it into the town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most public part, and upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers or ensigns and streamers.” An annual renewal seems also to be implied in the description by Stubbs, a Puritanical writer, of the custom of drawing home the May-pole by twenty or forty yoke of oxen. In some parts of Germany and Austria the May-tree or Whitsuntide-tree is renewed annually, a fresh tree being felled and set up.

We can hardly doubt that originally the practice everywhere was to set up a new May-tree every year. As the object of the custom was to bring in the fructifying spirit of vegetation, newly awakened in spring, the end would have been defeated if, instead of a living tree, green and sappy, an old withered one had been erected year after year or allowed to stand permanently. When, however, the meaning of the