(M196) This last act is to be explained as follows. The spirit of the corn and of other cultivated plants is sometimes conceived, not as immanent in the plant, but as its owner; hence the cutting of the corn at harvest, the digging of the roots, and the gathering of fruit from the fruit-trees are each and all of them acts of spoliation, which strip him of his property and reduce him to poverty. Hence he is often known as “the Poor Man” or “the Poor Woman.” Thus in the neighbourhood of Eisenach a small sheaf is sometimes left standing on the field for “the Poor Old Woman.”(700) At Marksuhl, near Eisenach, the puppet formed out of the last sheaf is itself called “the Poor Woman.” At Alt Lest in Silesia the man who binds the last sheaf is called the Beggar-man.(701) In a village near Roeskilde, in Zealand (Denmark), old-fashioned peasants sometimes make up the last sheaf into a rude puppet, which is called the Rye-beggar.(702) In Southern Schonen the sheaf which is bound last is called the Beggar; it is made bigger than the rest and is sometimes dressed in clothes. In the district of Olmütz the last sheaf is called the Beggar; it is given to an old woman, who must carry it home, limping on one foot.(703) Sometimes a little of the crop is left on the field for the spirit, under other names than “the Poor Old Woman.” Thus at Szagmanten, a village of the Tilsit district, the last sheaf was left standing on the field “for the Old Rye-woman.”(704) In Neftenbach (Canton of Zurich) the first three ears of corn reaped are thrown away on the field “to satisfy the Corn-mother and to make the next year’s crop abundant.”(705) At Kupferberg, in Bavaria, some corn is left standing on the field when the rest has been cut. Of this corn left standing they say that “it belongs to the Old Woman,” to whom it is dedicated in the following words:— “_We give it to the Old Woman;_ _She shall keep it._ _Next year may she be to us_ _As kind as this time she has been._”(706)