“THE BEAST-HUNT"

Evening Star, Issue 19552, 10 May 1927, Page 7

“THE BEAST-HUNT"

LOVERS DRIVER FROM TOWN SONG OF EXILE. 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 tho unwritten law of the village, she and her lover had to -be driven out (says tho London ‘Daily Mail’). The villagers thereupon arranged what they called a “ beast hunt,” following a custom which, as they told the magistrate at Rheisbach when thirty-two of them_ appeared to answer a charge of hindering the police in the discharge of their duty, had been observed since tho 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. “OUT WITH THE BEAR.” There were hundreds of people banging pots and pans and cracking horsewhips, and the shriefs of a Titanic iddle. the iron-rimmed wheel of an inrerted barrow played on an old scythe, rose above tho din. The crowd sang the traditional lines: What sort of beast is this? Out with tho beast. Out with the bear— Out, out of the village. Meantime the seventeen village firemen soused tho 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 tho thirtytwo villagers who had opposed the police the defending counsel brought in a document, in which it was stated that it was a matter of honor for every respectable villager to take part in the beast hunt. The court showed respect for the ancient mustom, and the thirty-two villagers escaped with nominal fines varying from throe to ten shillings. This leniency is deplored in Berlin.