some wild or domestic animal, or by the consumption of a particular dish which readily betrays its sacrificial origin[460]. The appearance of animals in ecclesiastical processions in St. Paul’s cathedral[461] and at Bury St. Edmunds[462] is especially significant; and it is natural to find an origin for the old English sport of bull-baiting rather in a survival of heathen ritual than in any reminiscence of the Roman amphitheatre[463]. Even where sacrifice itself has vanished, the minor rites which once accompanied it are still perpetuated in the superstitions or the festival customs of the peasantry. The heads and hides of horses or cattle, like the _exuviae_ of the sacrificial victims, are worn or carried in dance, procession or _quête_[464]. The dead bodies of animals are suspended by shepherds or game-keepers upon tree and barn-door, from immemorial habit or from some vague suspicion of the luck they will bring. Although inquiry will perhaps elicit the fallacious explanation that they are there _pour encourager les autres_[465]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made to show how widely sacrifice is represented in popular amusements and _ludi_. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to two personages who figure largely in innumerable village festivals. One is the ‘hobby-horse,’ not yet, though Shakespeare will have it so, ‘forgot[466]’: the other the ‘fool’ or ‘squire,’ a buffoon with a pendent cow’s tail, who is in many places _de rigueur_ in Maying or rushbearing[467]. Both of these grotesques seem to be at bottom nothing but worshippers careering in the skins of sacrificed animals. The cereal or liquor sacrifice is of less importance. Sugar and water, which may be conjectured to represent mead, is occasionally drunk beside a sacred well, and in one instance, at least, bread and cheese are thrown into the depths. Sometimes also a ploughman carries bread and cheese in his pocket when he goes abroad to cut the first furrow[468]. But the original rite is probably most nearly preserved in the custom of ‘youling’ fruit-trees to secure a good crop. When this is done, at Christmas or Ascension-tide, ale or cider is poured on the roots of the trees, and a cake placed in a fork of the boughs. Here and there a cake is also hung on the horn of an ox in the stall[469]. Doubtless the ‘feasten’ cake, of traditional shape and composition, which pervades the country, is in its origin sacramental[470]. Commonly enough, it represents an animal or human being, and in such cases it may be held, while retaining its own character of a cereal sacrifice, to be also a substitute for the animal or human sacrifice with which it should by rights be associated[471].