and to kindle it was rewarded on Easter
Sunday by the women, who gave him coloured eggs at the church door.
Well-to-do women gave him two; poorer women gave him only one. The
object of the whole ceremony was to keep off the hail. About a century
ago the Judas fire, as it was called, was put down by the police.[362]
At Giggenhausen and Aufkirchen, two other villages of Upper Bavaria, a
similar custom prevailed, yet with some interesting differences. Here
the ceremony, which took place between nine and ten at night on Easter
Saturday, was called "burning the Easter Man." On a height about a mile
from the village the young fellows set up a tall cross enveloped in
straw, so that it looked like a man with his arms stretched out. This
was the Easter Man. No lad under eighteen years of age might take part
in the ceremony. One of the young men stationed himself beside the
Easter Man, holding in his hand a consecrated taper which he had brought
from the church and lighted. The rest stood at equal intervals in a
great circle round the cross. At a given signal they raced thrice round
the circle, and then at a second signal ran straight at the cross and at
the lad with the lighted taper beside it; the one who reached the goal
first had the right of setting fire to the Easter Man. Great was the
jubilation while he was burning. When he had been consumed in the
flames, three lads were chosen from among the rest, and each of the
three drew a circle on the ground with a stick thrice round the ashes.
Then they all left the spot. On Easter Monday the villagers gathered the
ashes and strewed them on their fields; also they planted in the fields
palm-branches which had been consecrated on Palm Sunday, and sticks
which had been charred and hallowed on Good Friday, all for the purpose
of protecting their fields against showers of hail. The custom of
burning an Easter Man made of straw on Easter Saturday was observed also
at Abensberg, in Lower Bavaria.[363] In some parts of Swabia the Easter
fires might not be kindled with iron or steel or flint, but only by the
friction of wood.[364]

[The Easter fires in Baden; "Thunder poles."]

In Baden bonfires are still kindled in the churchyards on Easter
Saturday, and ecclesiastical refuse of various sorts, such as
candle-ends, old surplices, and the wool used by the priest in the
application of extreme unction, is consumed in the flames. At Zoznegg
down to about 1850 the fire was lighted by the pri