This indicates that the goddess, one of the Ixcuiname, was regarded as the inventress of that especial mode of sacrifice by which the victim was tied to a framework and shot to death with arrows. We have no classical statement that such a proceeding took place at her festival, however, but it is known that it formed part of the ritual at the festival of Xipe (q.v.). The expression, “We wish to couple the earth with you,” when taken along with the straddling attitude of the victim on his frame, has given rise to the assumption [178] that such a sacrifice was intended to symbolize a sexual connection between the victim and the earth or earth-mother. It appears to me as more probable that its intention was to draw down rain by sympathetic magic, the dropping blood from the arrow wounds symbolizing the rain, and the tear which the victim sheds in the representation of this sacrifice in the Codex Nuttall and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, combined with the fact that such sacrifices are supposed to have been made in years of drought, strengthens my belief in the soundness of this theory. Ixcuine means “four-faced,” and may apply to the circumstance that ancient idols of Tlazolteotl were, like those of Janus, provided with more than one face, so that they might look upon every direction whence the rain might come. Later, however, the Ixcuiname were regarded as a fourfold manifestation of Tlazolteotl and as personifying four sisters of different age, Tiacapan, Teicu, Tlaco and Xocoyotzin, who “represented the carnal passions.” [179] HYMN A song in the Sahagun MS. relating to Tlazolteotl is as follows: “The yellow blossom has flowered. She, our mother, with the thigh-skin of the goddess painted upon her face, came out of Tamoanchan. The white blossom has burst open, she our mother,” etc. [180] This of course symbolizes the yellow and white maize. The thigh-skin of the goddess “is the mask cut from the thigh of the sacrificed girl and worn by the priest” (see “Festivals,” infra). The statement that Tlazolteotl came out of Tamoanchan is important, for another song in the same series tells us that in that paradise was born her son Cinteotl, the Maize-god (q.v.). FESTIVALS