On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the facts of popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff in his hand. His business is to ask if the children have been "good," and if the result of his inquiries is satisfactory he throws down apples, nuts, and cakes. If not, it is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he does not visibly appear, but children hang up stockings filled with hay, and next morning find presents in them, left by the saint in gratitude for the fodder provided for his horse. He is there imagined as a rider on a white horse, and the same conception prevails in Austrian Silesia, where he brings the "Martin's horns" already mentioned.{85} In Silesia when it snows at Martinmas people say that the saint is coming on his white horse, and there, it may be noted, the _Schimmelreiter_ appears at the same season.{86} In certain respects, it has been suggested, St. Martin may have taken the place of Woden.{87} It is perhaps not without significance that, like the god, he is a military hero, and conceived as a rider on horseback. At Duesseldorf he used to be represented in his festival procession by a man riding on another fellow's back.{88} At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to house, singing and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper caps on their heads, dressed as Turks, carry a sort of litter whereon St. Martin sits. He has a long white beard of flax and a paper mitre and stole, and holds a large wooden spoon to receive apples and other eatables that are given to the children, as well as a leather purse for offerings of money.{89} In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to appear--Pelzmaerten (Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and frightened the children, before he threw them their apples and nuts. In several places in Swabia, too, Pelzmaerte was known; |207| he had a black face, a cow-bell hung on his person, and he distributed blows as well as nuts and apples.{90} In him there is obviously more of the pagan mummer than the Christian bishop. In Belgium St. Martin is chiefly known as the bringer of apples and nuts for children; in Bavaria and Austria he has a different aspect: a _gerte_ or rod, supposed to promote fruitfulness among cattle and prosperity in general, is connected with his day. The rods are taken round by the neatherds to the farmers, and one is given to each--two to rich proprietors; they are to be used, when spring comes, to drive out the cattle for the first time. In Bavaria they are formed by a birch-bough with all the leaves and twigs stripped off--except at the top, to which oak-leaves and juniper-twigs are fastened. At Etzendorf a curious old rhyme shows that the herdsman with the rod is regarded as the representative of St. Martin.{91}