THE "BEASTHUNT."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 23

THE "BEASTHUNT."

GIRL AND LOVER DRIVEN FROM VILLAGE. A girl who was bad lived in a village near Rheisbach on the Rhine. She had unhappily yielded to the blandishments of a lover, and therefore, according to the unwritten law of the village, she and her lover had to be driven out.

The villagers thereupon arranged what they called a "beast hunt," following a custom which, as they told the magistrate at Rheisbach when 32 of them appeared to answer a charge of hindering the police in the discharge of their duty, had been observed since the twelfth century. They had evidently not read Tacitus or they would have carried the tradition back to the time of . the pagan world. On three successive nights everybody in the village, from the school teacher and the oldest inhabitant to the youngest apprentice, assembled outside the house of the girl when night fell and gave an infernal concert. • "Oat With the Bear." There werejliundreds of people banging pots and paiis and cracking horsewhips, and the slnjieks of a Titanic fiddle, the iron-rimmed wheel of an inverted barrow played on with an old scythe, rose above the din.. The crowd sang the traditional lines. What sort of beast is this Out with the beast, Out with the bear, „ Out, out of the village. Meantime the seventeen village firemen soused the 1 girl's house with water. On the fourth night, when the girl and her lover had slipped out of the village unawares,; a force of police was sent to restore order and was roughly' handled. At the trial <of the 32 villagers who had opposed the police the defending counsel brought in a document in which it was stated that it was a matter of honour for every respectable villager to take part in the beast hunt. The court .showed respect for the ancient custom and the 32 villagers escaped with nominal fines varying from three to ten shillings. This leniency, is "deplored in Berjfin.