In an old story-book called _Tom Hickathrift_, otherwise _Hickifric_,[44] traits are preserved in connection with Tom, which recall the peculiarities of the god Thor. Tom dwelt with his mother, who slept on straw; there was no father. Thor had no father; his mother was designated as Godmor. Tom ate hugely, Thor did the same. Tom flung his hammer into the river, Thor measured distance by throwing his hammer. Tom carted beer--a trait that recalls Thor's fits of drunkenness. On one occasion Tom made himself a weapon by sticking an axle-tree into a waggon-wheel, which suggests that Thor's hammer was a flat stone mace. Likewise Tom, having broken his club, "seized upon a lusty raw-boned miller," and used him as a weapon. Can we hesitate from accepting that this "miller" in a confused manner recalls the _Mjölnir_--that is the hammer--of the northern god Thor? [44] Reprinted Halliwell, 1849, p. 81 ff. The analysis of the ladybird rhymes takes us even farther afield. In Saxony they sing:-- Flieg, Käfer, flieg, dein Vater ist im Krieg, Deine Mutter ist in den Stiefel gekroche, Hat das linke Bein gebroche. (M., p. 347.) "Fly, chafer, fly, father has gone to war, mother has crept into the shoe, she has broken her left leg." The mother with the broken leg of this rhyme recalls the limping mother of the Babyland game, and the person in _Drop Handkerchief_, who was bitten. The expression of "creeping into a shoe" yields a clue to the nature of the woman of one of our rhymes who lived in a shoe, and was oppressed by the number of her children. In one form this rhyme, cited above in connection with the tale of Mother Hubbard, describes how the children were to all appearance dead, but were quickened into life. This conception is allied to the quickening into life of the babes in the Babyland game. In its earliest printed form the rhyme stands as follows:-- There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn't know what to do; She gave them some broth without any bread, She whipped all their bums and sent them to bed. (_c._ 1783, p. 52.) Those of our ladybird rhymes which call on the insect in matters of love divination have their closest parallels in Scandinavia. In Sweden they sing:-- Jungfru Marias Nyckelpiga, Flyg öster, flyg vester, Flyg dit der bor din älskede. (1849, p. 5.) "Fly, Our Lady's keybearer! fly east, fly west, fly where thy lover dwells." Of the rhymes of this class, one introduces the term Golloway. This may be intended for Yellow Way, the course of the sun in daytime, as distinct from the Milky Way, the course of the stars at night.