These words clearly shew that the Old Woman for whom the corn is left on the field is not a real personage, poor and hungry, but the mythical Old Woman who makes the corn to grow. At Schüttarschen, in West Bohemia, after the crop has been reaped, a few stalks are left standing and a garland is attached to them. “That belongs to the Wood-woman,” they say, and offer a prayer. In this way the Wood-woman, we are told, has enough to live on through the winter and the corn will thrive the better next year. The same thing is done for all the different kinds of corn-crop.(707) So in Thüringen, when the after-grass (_Grummet_) is being got in, a little heap is left lying on the field; it belongs to “the Little Wood-woman” in return for the blessing she has bestowed.(708) In the Frankenwald of Bavaria three handfuls of flax were left on the field “for the Wood-woman.”(709) At Lindau in Anhalt the reapers used to leave some stalks standing in the last corner of the last field for “the Corn-woman to eat.”(710) In some parts of Silesia it was till lately the custom to leave a few corn-stalks standing in the field, “in order that the next harvest should not fail.”(711) In Russia it is customary to leave patches of unreaped corn in the fields and to place bread and salt on the ground near them. “These ears are eventually knotted together, and the ceremony is called ‘the plaiting of the beard of Volos,’ and it is supposed that after it has been performed no wizard or other evilly-disposed person will be able to hurt the produce of the fields. The unreaped patch is looked upon as tabooed; and it is believed that if any one meddles with it he will shrivel up, and become twisted like the interwoven ears. Similar customs are kept up in various parts of Russia. Near Kursk and Voroneje, for instance, a patch of rye is usually left in honour of the Prophet Elijah, and in another district one of oats is consecrated to St. Nicholas. As it is well known that both the Saint and the Prophet have succeeded to the place once held in the estimation of the Russian people by Perun, it seems probable that Volos really was, in ancient times, one of the names of the thunder-god.”(712) In the north-east of Scotland a few stalks were sometimes left unreaped on the field for the benefit of “the aul’ man.”(713) Here “the aul’ man” is probably the equivalent of the harvest Old Man of Germany.(714) Among the Mohammedans of Zanzibar it is customary at sowing a field to reserve a certain portion of it for the guardian spirits, who at harvest are invited, to the tuck of drum, to come and take their share; tiny huts are also built in which food is deposited for their use.(715) In the island of Nias, to prevent the depredations of wandering spirits among the rice at harvest, a miniature field is dedicated to them and in it are sown all the plants that grow in the real fields.(716) The Hos, a Ewe tribe of negroes in Togoland, observe a similar custom for a similar reason.