Nearly allied to the tree-spirits were the Corn-spirits,[12] which haunted and protected the green or yellow fields. Mr. Ralston tells us that by the popular fancy they were often symbolised under the form of wolves, or of “buckmen,” goat-legged creatures, similar to the classic Satyrs. “When the wind blows the long Grass or waving Corn, German peasants still say, ‘The Grass-wolf’ or ‘The Corn-wolf,’ is abroad! In some places the last sheaf of Rye is left as a shelter to the _Roggenwolf_, or Rye-wolf, during the winter’s cold; and in many a summer or autumn festive rite, that being is represented by a rustic, who assumes a wolf-like appearance. The Corn-spirit, however, was often symbolised under a human form.” [12] Further details will be found in the succeeding chapter. The belief in the existence of a spirit whose life is bound up in that of the tree it inhabits remains to the present day. There is a wide-spread German belief that if a sick man is passed through a cleft made in a tree, which is immediately afterwards bound up, the man and the tree become mysteriously connected--if the tree flourishes so will the man; but if it withers he will die. Should, however, the tree survive the man, the soul of the latter will inhabit the tree; and (according to Pagan tradition) if the tree be felled and used for ship-building, the dead man’s ghost becomes the haunting genius of the ship. This strange notion may have had its origin in the classic story of the Argonauts and their famous ship. A beam on the prow of the _Argo_ had been cut by Minerva out of the forest of Dodona, where the trees were thought to be inhabited by oracular spirits: hence the beam retained the power of giving oracles to the voyagers, and warned them that they would never reach their country till Jason had been purified of the murder of Absyrtus. There is a story that tells how, when a musician cut a piece of wood from a tree into which a girl had been metamorphosed by her angry mother, he was startled to see blood oozing from the wound. And when he had shaped it into a bow, and played with it upon his violin before her mother, such a heart-rending wail made itself heard, that the mother was struck with remorse, and bitterly repented of her hasty deed. Mr. Ralston quotes a Czekh story of a Nymph who appeared day by day among men, but always went back to her willow by night. She married a mortal, bare him children, and lived happily with him, till at length he cut down her Willow-tree: that moment his wife died. Out of this Willow was made a cradle, which had the power of instantly lulling to sleep the babe she had left behind her; and when the babe became a child, it was able to hold converse with its dead mother by means of a pipe, cut from the twigs growing on the stump, which once had been that mother’s abiding-place. [Headpiece] CHAPTER VIII. Plants of the Devil.