(M225) Yet on the other hand there are circumstances which point to an intimate association, both at Athens and Rome, of these swinging festivals with an intention of promoting the growth of cultivated plants. Such circumstances are the legendary connexion of the Athenian festival with Bacchus, the custom of offering the first-fruits of the vintage to Erigone and Icarius,(752) and at Rome the practice of hanging masks on trees at the time of sowing(753) and in order to make the grapes grow better.(754) Perhaps we can reconcile the two apparently discrepant effects attributed to swinging as a means of expiation on the one side and of fertilisation on the other, by supposing that in both cases the intention is to clear the air of dangerous influences, whether these are ghosts of the unburied dead or spiritual powers inimical to the growth of plants. Independent of both appears to be the notion that the higher you swing the higher will grow the crops.(755) This last is homoeopathic or imitative magic pure and simple, without any admixture of the ideas of purification or expiation. (M226) In modern Greece and Italy the custom of swinging as a festal rite, whatever its origin may be, is still observed in some places. At the small village of Koukoura in Elis an English traveller observed peasants swinging from a tree in honour of St. George, whose festival it was.(756) On the Tuesday after Easter the maidens of Seriphos play their favourite game of the swing. They hang a rope from one wall to another of the steep, narrow, filthy street, and putting some clothes on it swing one after the other, singing as they swing. Young men who try to pass are called upon to pay toll in the shape of a penny, a song, and a swing. The words which the youth sings are generally these: “The gold is swung, the silver is swung, and swung too is my love with the golden hair”; to which the girl replies, “Who is it that swings me that I may gild him with my favour, that I may work him a fez all covered with pearls?”(757) In the Greek island of Karpathos the villagers assemble at a given place on each of the four Sundays before Easter, a swing is erected, and the women swing one after the other, singing death wails such as they chant round the mimic tombs in church on the night of Good Friday.(758) On Christmas Day peasant girls in some villages of Calabria fasten ropes to iron rings in the ceiling and swing on them, while they sing certain songs prescribed by custom for the occasion. The practice is regarded not merely as an amusement but also as an act of devotion.(759) “It is a custom in Cadiz, when Christmas comes, to fasten swings in the courtyards of houses, and even in the houses themselves when there is no room for them outside. In the evenings lads and lasses assemble round the swings and pass the time happily in swinging amid joyous songs and cries. The swings are taken down when Carnival is come.”(760) The observance of the custom at Christmas, that is, at the