imitation of threshing and winnowing her. Mitigated forms of the custom are observed in various places. Thus among the Germans of Schüttarschen in West Bohemia it was customary at the close of the threshing to “throttle” the farmer’s wife by squeezing her neck between the arms of a flail till she consented to bake a special kind of cake called a _drischala_ (from _dreschen_, “to thresh”).(503) A similar custom of “throttling” the farmer’s wife at the threshing is practised in some parts of Bavaria, only there the pressure is applied by means of a straw rope instead of a flail.(504) (M117) In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old, or at least as of mature age. Hence the names of Mother, Grandmother, Old Woman, and so forth. But in other cases the corn-spirit is conceived as young. Thus at Saldern, near Wolfenbuttel, when the rye has been reaped, three sheaves are tied together with a rope so as to make a puppet with the corn ears for a head. This puppet is called the Maiden or the Corn-maiden (_Kornjungfer_).(505) Sometimes the corn-spirit is conceived as a child who is separated from its mother by the stroke of the sickle. This last view appears in the Polish custom of calling out to the man who cuts the last handful of corn, “You have cut the navel-string.”(506) In some districts of West Prussia the figure made out of the last sheaf is called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapt up in it. The woman who binds the last sheaf and represents the Corn-mother is told that she is about to be brought to bed; she cries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in the character of grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation of swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, who is carried joyfully to the barn, lest he should catch cold in the open air.(507) In other parts of North Germany the last sheaf, or the puppet made out of it, is called the Child, the Harvest-Child, and so on, and they call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “you are getting the child.”(508)