In this article the author examines the interrelationship between lifecycle ritual, in the form of disposal of the unclean dead, and certain agrarian concerns and rituals of the Russian rural community relating to the early summer and, more specifically, to the Whitsun period. In so doing she hopes to shed some further light on a puzzling belief; namely that the interment, both in consecrated ground and in earth generally, of the unclean dead could cause drought and other adverse weather conditions. Documented since the thirteenth century, this belief persisted among the East Slavs until the early part of the twentieth century and often led to the desecration of grave-sites