When this straw is in the brook
Go away into the water!"STRAW MAGIC
Straw was anciently a symbol of emptiness, unfruitfulness, and death,
and it is evidently used in this sense by the gypsies, or derived by them
from some tradition connected with it. A feigned or fruitless marriage is
indicated in Germany by the terms Strohwittwer and Strohwittwe. From the
earliest times in France the breaking a straw signified that a compact was
broken with a man because there was nothing in him. Thus in 922 the
barons of Charles the Simple, in dethroning him, broke the straws which
they held (CHARLOTTE DE LA TOUR, "Symbols of Flowers").
Still, straws have something in them. She who will lay straws on the
table in the full moonlight by an open window, especially on Saturday
night, and will repeat:--
"Straw, draw, crow craw,
By my life I give thee law"then the straws will become fairies and dance to the cawing of a crow
who will come and sit on the ]edge of the window. And so witches were
wont to make a man of straw, as did Mother Gookin, in Hawthorne's tale,
and unto these they gave life, whence the saying of a man of straw and
straw bail, albeit this latter is deemed by some to be related to the breaking
of straws and of dependence, as told in the tale of Charles the Simple.
Straw-lore is extensive and curious. As in elder-stalks, small fairies make
their homes in its tubes. To strew chopped straw before the house of a bride
was such an insult to her character, in Germany, and so common that laws
were passed against it. I possess a work printed about 1650, entitled "De
Injuriis quæ haud raro Novis Nuptis inferri solent. I. Per sparsionem
dissectorum culmorum frugum. Germ. Dusch das Werckerling Streuen," &c.
An immense amount of learned quotation and reference by its author
indicates that this custom which was influenced by superstition, was very
extensively written on in its time. It was allied to the binding of knots and
other magic ceremonies to prevent the consummation of marriages