Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/120

98 Bridget, come in; thy bed is ready.’ One or more candles are left burning near it all night.”

Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not directly represented, is implied by naming the human representative of the spirit “the Bride,” and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys go about carrying a May-tree or leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a bride with a great nosegay in her hair. They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a present, and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something they will themselves have something the whole year through; but if they give her nothing they will themselves have nothing. In some parts of Westphalia two girls lead a flower-crowned girl called “the Whitsun-tide Bride” from door to door, singing a song in which they ask for eggs. In Bresse in the month of May a girl called la Mariée is tricked out with ribbons and nosegays and is led about by a gallant. She is preceded by a lad carrying a green May-tree, and appropriate verses are sung.

 

Such then are some of the ways in which the tree-spirit or the spirit of vegetation is represented 