Morena (series of Slovak folk songs, arr. D. Kardoš)

Morena is a series of Slovak folk songs, which together represent the ceremony of the “burial of Death”. The Slovak tradition welcome the new Spring by the symbolic burial of Morana, the Slavonic pagan goddess of Death and Winter.

In a procession, girls carry a straw-puppet enshrouded in white linen and singing a funeral song. At the end, accompanied by outbursts of joy, they throw the Morana puppet in the ice cold water of a mountain creek.