(M186) In the Austrian provinces of Salzburg and Tyrol bands of mummers wearing grotesque masks, with bells jingling on their persons, and carrying long sticks or poles in their hands, used formerly to run and leap about on certain days of the year for the purpose of procuring good crops. They were called _Perchten_, a name derived from Perchta, Berchta, or Percht, a mythical old woman, whether goddess or elf, who is well known all over South Germany; Mrs. Perchta (_Frau Perchta_), as they call her, is to be met with in Elsace, Swabia, Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland, but nowhere, perhaps, so commonly as in Salzburg and the Tyrol. In the Tyrol she appears as a little old woman with a very wrinkled face, bright lively eyes, and a long hooked nose; her hair is dishevelled, her garments tattered and torn. Hence they say to a slatternly wench, “You are a regular Perchta.” She goes about especially during the twelve days from Christmas to Twelfth Night (Epiphany), above all on the Eve of Twelfth Night, which is often called Perchta’s Day. Many precautions must be observed during these mystic days in order not to incur her displeasure, for she is mischievous to man and beast. If she appears in the byre, a distemper breaks out among the cows. That is why during these days the byres must be kept very clean and straw laid on the threshold; otherwise you will find bald patches on your sheep and goats next morning, and next summer the hair which has been filched from the animals will descend in hail-stones from the sky. Old Mrs. Perchta also keeps a very sharp eye on spinners during the twelve days; she inspects all distaffs and spinning-wheels in the houses, and if she finds any flax or tow unspun on them, she tears it to bits, and she does not spare the lazy spinner, for she scratches her and smacks her fingers so that they bear the marks of it for the rest of her life. Indeed she sometimes does much more; for she rips up the belly of the sluggard and stuffs it with flax. That is the punishment with which a Bavarian mother will threaten an idle jade of a girl who has left some flax on her distaff on New Year’s Eve. However, they say in Bavaria that if you only eat plenty of the rich juicy cakes which are baked for Mrs. Perchta on her day, the old woman’s knife will glance off your body without making any impression on it. Perchta often comes not alone but attended by many little children, who follow her as chickens waddle after the mother hen; and if you should see any little child lagging behind the rest and blubbering, you may be quite sure that that child has been baptized. On the Eve of Twelfth Night everybody should eat pancakes baked of meal and milk or water. If anybody does not do so, old Mrs. Perchta comes and slits up his stomach, takes out the other food, fills up the vacuity so created with a tangled skein and bricks, and then sews up the orifice neatly, using, singularly enough, a ploughshare for a needle and an iron chain for thread.