Clothed Straw Puppets in Estonian Folk Calendar Tradition: a Shift From Cult to Joke
Clothed Straw Puppets in Estonian Folk Calendar Tradition: a Shift From Cult to Joke

Summary/Abstract: The present paper deals with the custom of metsiku tegemine [making the Wild One, Estonian mets 'forest'],1 i.e. a tradition of making a straw puppet, dressed as a man or a woman, which was carried out of the community territory on one of the yearly winter festivals of the folk calendar. The custom, known in several West Estonian parishes, was relatively well-documented already at the turn of the 17th century when it was described as a pagan rite of peasants. Later students of folk belief have treated the custom correspondingly as a cult rite and therefore metsik is often mentioned in respective surveys on Estonian folklore and mythology.

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