they got under the gutter of a roof they were safe. But if she caught them, she tore them in pieces. To this day you may see the graves where the mangled bodies of her victims lie buried. When no such interruption took place, the noisy rout of maskers rushed madly about, with jingling bells and resounding cracks of whips, entering the houses, dancing here, drinking there, teasing wayfarers, or racing from village to village like the Wild Hunt itself in the sky; till at the close of the winter day the church bells rang the _Ave Maria_. Then at last the wild uproar died away into silence. Such tumultuous masquerades were thought to be very beneficial to the crops; a bad harvest would be set down to the omission of the _Perchten_ to skip and jump about in their usual fashion.(584) (M188) In the province of Salzburg the _Perchten_ mummers are also divided into two sets, the Beautiful _Perchten_ and the Ugly _Perchten_. The Ugly _Perchten_ are properly speaking twelve young men dressed in black sheepskins and wearing hoods of badger-skins and grotesque wooden masks, which represent either coarse human features with long teeth and horns, or else the features of fabulous animals with beaks and bristles or movable jaws. They all carry bells, both large and small, fastened to broad leathern girdles. The procession was headed by a man with a big drum, and after him came lads bearing huge torches and lanterns fastened to tall poles; for in Salzburg or some parts of it these mummers played their pranks by night. Behind the torchbearers came two Fools, a male and a female, the latter acted by a lad in woman’s clothes. The male Fool carried a sausage-like roll, with which he struck at all women or girls of his acquaintance when they shewed themselves at the open doors or windows. Along with the _Perchten_ themselves went a train of young fellows cracking whips, blowing horns, or jingling bells. The ways might be miry and the night pitch dark, but with flaring lights the procession swept rapidly by, the men leaping along with the help of their long sticks and waking the echoes of the slumbering valley by their loud uproar. From time to time they stopped at a farm, danced and cut their capers before the house, for which they were rewarded by presents of food and strong drink; to offer them money would have been an insult. By midnight the performance came to an end, and the tired maskers dispersed to their homes.