The scholiast explains. ‘At the Pyanepsia and the Thargelia the Athenians hold a feast to Helios and the Horae, and the boys carry about branches twined with wool, from which they get the name of _Eiresiones_, and they hang them up before the doors.’ It is very probable that the wool (εἶρος), taken perhaps from a sacred animal, gave its name to the Eiresione, but there were many other things besides wool hung on the branch. Our fullest account comes from the rhetorician Pausanias, who is quoted by Eustathius[195] in his commentary on the _Iliad_. Eustathius is explaining that the term ἀμφιθαλής means a child with both parents alive, and he adds by way of illustration that children of this sort were chosen by the ancients to deck out the Eiresione. He then quotes from the works of Pausanias the following account of the ceremony: ‘The Eiresione is a branch of olive twined with wool, and having hanging from it various fruits of the earth; a boy, both of whose parents are alive, carries it forth and places it in front of the doors of Apollo’s sanctuary, at the feast of Pyanepsia.’ He then goes on to an aetiological legend about Theseus, and finally records the words of the song sung by the children who carried or attended the Eiresione: ‘Eiresione brings All good things, Figs and fat cakes to eat, Soft oil and honey sweet, And brimming wine-cup deep That she may drink and sleep.’ The boy who actually carried the Eiresione must have both parents alive, because any contact with death even remote was unlucky; the ghost of either parent might be about. The song is of some interest because of the half-personification of Eiresione. The Maypole or harvest-sheaf is halfway to a harvest Maiden; it is thus, as will be seen later, that a goddess is made. A song is sung, a story told, and the very telling fixes the outline of personality. It is possible to worship long in spirit, but as soon as the story-telling, myth-making, instinct awakes you have anthropomorphism and theology. What was hung on the Eiresione no doubt depended on the wealth of particular worshippers; we hear of white wool and purple wool, vessels of wine, figs, strings of acorns, cakes; nothing in the way of natural produce came amiss. The Eiresione once fixed over the door remained there, a charm against pestilence and famine, till the next year; then it was changed for a new one. The withered branch must have been a familiar sight at Athens. When in the _Plutus_[196] of Aristophanes the young rough is insulting the old woman and thrusting his torch into her withered face, she cries: ‘For pity’s sake don’t bring your torch so near me,’ and Chremylus says: ‘Yes, right she is, for if she caught a spark She’d burn up like an old Eiresione.’