harvest-field, all the labourers stop and shout as with one voice “He-goat! He-goat!” At rape-seed threshing in Schleswig, which generally takes place on the field, the same cry is raised if the stranger does not take off his hat.(77) At sowing their winter corn the Prussian Slavs used to kill a goat, consume its flesh with many superstitious ceremonies, and hang the skin on a high pole near an oak and a large stone. Here it remained till harvest. Then, after a prayer had been offered by a peasant who acted as priest (_Weidulut_) the young folk joined hands and danced round the oak and the pole. Afterwards they scrambled for the bunch of corn, and the priest distributed the herbs with a sparing hand. Then he placed the goat-skin on the large stone, sat down on it and preached to the people about the history of their forefathers and their old heathen customs and beliefs.(78) The goat-skin thus suspended on the field from sowing time to harvest represents the corn-spirit superintending the growth of the corn. Another form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a bull, cow, or ox. When the wind sweeps over the corn they say at Conitz in West Prussia, “The Steer is running in the corn;”(79) when the corn is thick and strong in one spot, they say in some parts of East Prussia, “The Bull is lying in the corn.” When a harvester has overstrained and lamed himself, they say in the Graudenz district (West Prussia), “The Bull pushed him;” in Lothringen they say, “He has the Bull.” The meaning of both expressions is that he has unwittingly lighted upon the divine corn-spirit, who has punished the profane intruder with lameness.(80) So near Chambéry when a reaper wounds himself with his sickle, it is said that he has “the wound of the Ox.”(81) In the district of Bunzlau the last sheaf is sometimes made into the shape of a horned ox, stuffed with tow and wrapt in corn-ears. This figure is called the Old Man (_der Alte_). In some parts of Bohemia the last sheaf is made up in human form and called the Buffalo-bull.(82) These cases show a confusion between the anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit. The confusion is parallel to that of killing a wether under the name of a wolf.(83) In the Canton of Thurgau, Switzerland, the last sheaf, if it is a large one, is called the Cow.(84) All over Swabia the last bundle of corn on the field is called the Cow; the man who cuts the last ears “has the Cow,” and is himself called Cow or Barley-cow or Oats-cow, according to the crop; at the harvest supper he gets a nosegay of flowers and corn-ears and a more liberal allowance of drink than the rest. But he is teased and laughed at; so no one likes to be the Cow.(85) The Cow was sometimes represented by the figure of a woman made out of ears of corn and corn-flowers. It was carried to the farmhouse by the man who had cut the last handful of corn. The children ran after him and the neighbours