They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they
go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes,
and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it
into a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death's discarded
clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same
hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated
Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new,
will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos
and the Dithyramb.

These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple
carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we
have these figures, these "impersonations," we are getting away from the
merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor
discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to
personification. On this question of personification, in which so much
of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear.

* * * * *

In discussions on such primitive rites as "Carrying out the Death,"
"Bringing in Summer," we are often told that the puppet of the girl is
carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it "personifies the
Spirit of Vegetation," or it "embodies the Spirit of Summer." The
Spirit of Vegetation is "incarnate in the puppet." We are led, by this
way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms
an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later
"embodies" it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act
so high and difficult as abstraction.