It may be observed that meal forms an ingredient in several of these sorceries. It is a very ancient essential to sacrifices, and is offered to the spirits of the stream to appease them, as it was often given for the same purpose to the wind. The old Germans, says Prætorius, imagined the storm-wind as a starving, ravenous being, and sought to appease it by throwing meal to it. So it happened once even of later years near Bamberg when a mighty wind was raging one night that an old woman took her meal-bag and threw its contents out of the window, saying:-- "Lege dich, lieber Wind, Bringe dies deinem Kind!" "Dear Wind, be not so wild, Take that unto thy child!" "In which thing," adds the highly Protestant Prætorius ("Anthropodemus Plutonicus," p. 429), "she was like the Papists who would fain appease the Donnerwetter, or thunderstorms, with the sound of baptized bells, as though they were raging round like famished lions, or grim wolves, or a soldier foraging, seeking what they may devour." The Wind here represents the Wild Hunter, or the Storm, the leader of the Wüthende Heer, or "raging army," who, under different names, is the hero of so many German legends. That the voice of the wind should seem like that of wild beasts roaring for food would occur naturally enough to any one who was familiar with both. When a child refuses the breast the gypsies believe that a Pçuvus-wife, or a female spirit of the earth has secretly sucked it. In such a case they place between the mother's breasts onions, and repeat these words:-- "Pçuvushi, Pçuvushi, Ac tu náshvályi Tiro tçud ac yakhá, Andre pçuv tu pçábuvá! Thávdá, thávdá miro tçud, Thávdá, thávdá, parno tçud, Thávdá, thávdá, sár kámáv,-- Mre cáveske bokhale!" "Earth-spirit! Earth-spirit! Be thou ill. Let thy milk be fire! Burn in the earth! Flow, flow, my milk! Flow, flow, white milk! Flow, flow, as I desire To my hungry child!" The same is applied when the milk holds back or will not flow, as it is then supposed that a Pçuvus-wife has secretly suckled her own child at the mother's breast. It is an old belief that elves put their own offspring in the place of infants, whom they sometimes steal. This subject of elf-changelings is extensively treated by all the writers on witchcraft. There is even a Latin treatise, or thesis, devoted to defining the legal and social status, rights, &c., of such beings. It is entitled, "De Infantibus Supposititiis, vulgo Wechsel-Bälgen," Dresden, 1678. "Such infants," says the author (John Valentine Merbitz), "are called Cambiones, Vagiones (à continuo vagitu), Germanis Küllkräpfe, Wechselkinder, Wechselbälge, all of which indicates, in German belief, children which have nothing human about them except the skin."