they were calling swine. Sometimes, after being wheeled round the village, he is flung on the dunghill.(116) Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a pig plays his part at sowing-time as well as at harvest. At Neuautz, in Courland, when barley is sown for the first time in the year, the farmer’s wife boils the chine of a pig along with the tail, and brings it to the sower on the field. He eats of it, but cuts off the tail and sticks it in the field; it is believed that the ears of corn will then grow as long as the tail.(117) Here the pig is the corn-spirit, whose fertilising power is sometimes supposed to lie especially in his tail.(118) As a pig he is put in the ground at sowing-time, and as a pig he reappears amongst the ripe corn at harvest. For amongst the neighbouring Esthonians, as we have seen,(119) the last sheaf is called the Rye-boar. Somewhat similar customs are observed in Germany. In the Salza district, near Meiningen, a certain bone in the pig is called “the Jew on the winnowing-fan” (_der Jud’ auf der Wanne_). The flesh of this bone is boiled on Shrove Tuesday, but the bone is put amongst the ashes, which the neighbours exchange as presents on St. Peter’s Day (22d February), and then mix with the seed-corn.(120) In the whole of Hessen, Meiningen, etc., people eat pea-soup with dried pig-ribs on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas. The ribs are then collected and hung in the room till sowing-time, when they are inserted in the sown field or in the seed-bag amongst the flax seed. This is thought to be an infallible specific against earth-fleas and moles, and to cause the flax to grow well and tall.(121) In many parts of White Russia people eat a roast lamb or sucking-pig at Easter, and then throw the bones backwards upon the fields, to preserve the corn from hail.(122)