ntain or hill round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called
"the witch." At nightfall the pile was set on fire, and the young folks
danced wildly round it, some of them cracking whips or ringing bells;
and when the fire burned low enough, they leaped over it. This was
called "burning the witch." In some parts of the canton also they used
to wrap old wheels in straw and thorns, put a light to them, and send
them rolling and blazing down hill. The same custom of rolling lighted
wheels down hill is attested by old authorities for the cantons of
Aargau and Bale. The more bonfires could be seen sparkling and flaring
in the darkness, the more fruitful was the year expected to be; and the
higher the dancers leaped beside or over the fire, the higher, it was
thought, would grow the flax. In the district of Freiburg and at Birseck
in the district of Bale it was the last married man or woman who must
kindle the bonfire. While the bonfires blazed up, it was customary in
some parts of Switzerland to propel burning discs of wood through the
air by means of the same simple machinery which is used for the purpose
in Swabia. Each lad tried to send his disc fizzing and flaring through
the darkness as far as possible, and in discharging it he mentioned the
name of the person to whose honour it was dedicated. But in Praettigau
the words uttered in launching the fiery discs referred to the abundance
which was apparently expected to follow the performance of the ceremony.
Among them were, "Grease in the pan, corn in the fan, and the plough in
the earth!"[297]

[Connexion of these bonfires with the custom of "carrying out Death;"
effigies burnt on Shrove Tuesday.]

It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the
first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the
effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of "carrying out
Death." We have seen that at Spachendorf, in Austrian Silesia, on the
morning of Rupert's Day (Shrove Tuesday?), a straw-man, dressed in a fur
coat and a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there
burned, and that while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a
fragment of it, which he fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his
garden or buries in his field, believing that this will make the crops
to grow better. The ceremony is known as the "burying of Death."[298]
Even when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the meaning of the
observance