With regard to the name Demeter, it has been plausibly argued by Mannhardt(1094) that the first part of the word is derived from _dēai_, a Cretan word for “barley”;(1095) and that thus Demeter means the Barley-mother or the Corn-mother; for the root of the word appears to have been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches of the Aryans, and even of the Greeks themselves.(1096) As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter,(1097) it is not surprising that her name should be of Cretan origin. This explanation of the name Demeter is supported by a host of analogies which the diligence of Mannhardt has collected from modern European folk-lore, and of which the following are specimens. In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the wind sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants say, “There comes the Corn-mother,” or “The Corn-mother is running over the field,” or “The Corn-mother is going through the corn.”(1098) When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them.(1099) Or again she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. In Norway also the Pea-mother is said to sit among the peas.(1100) Similar expressions are current among the Slavs. The Poles and Czechs warn children against the Corn-mother who sits in the corn. Or they call her the Old Corn-woman, and say that she sits in the corn and strangles the children who tread it down.(1101) The Lithuanians say, “The Old Rye-woman sits in the corn.”(1102) Again the Corn-mother is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said, “It will be a good year for flax; the Flax-mother has been seen.” At Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria) down to fifteen or twenty years ago, people believed that when the crops on a particular farm compared unfavourably with those of the neighbourhood, the reason was that the Corn-mother had punished the farmer for his sins.(1103) In a village of Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn-fields, which she fertilises by passing through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn.(1104)