Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore[1075]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione[1076], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse[1077], which in course of time becomes a permanency. 5. _The cutting off the tail is explained by the idea that a remnant of the body of the representative of the Corn-spirit is sufficient to produce this spirit afresh in the vegetation of the coming year._ The examples Mannhardt quotes are numerous, and only gain force when brought together: I must refer the reader to his work for them[1078]. The word _tail_ not only occurs frequently in harvest customs (e. g. the cutter of the last sheaf is called the wheat-tail or barley-tail[1079]), but there is little doubt that virtue was believed to reside in a tail[1080]. Who knows but that the preservation of the fox’s brush by fox-hunters has some origin of this kind? 6. The use made of the blood, which was kept and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves of the Fordicidia, and with sulphur and bean-straw as a medicine to be distributed to the people at the Parilia, tells its own story without need of illustration (see on April 15 and 21). The blood was the life[1081]; the fire and sulphur-fumes were to purify and avert evil. Both men and beasts leapt over the fire into which this mixture was thrown at the Parilia, to gain new life and strength, and to avert the influences which might retard them. Finally, Mannhardt has some remarks on the origin of the rite, which were suggested by Schwegler and Ambrosch[1082]. The Campus Martius, the scene of the sacrifice, was originally _terra regis_, cultivated for him by the people[1083]. When the king was the chief farmer, the horse’s head was carried to his house (regia) and fixed thereon, and the tail allowed to drip on to his hearth. When the neighbouring community of the Subura was united with that of the Palatine, the seat of the oldest community, the remembrance of their duality survived in the contest for the head: if the men of the Subura won it, they fixed it on the turris Mamilia, which may have been the dwelling of their own chief. Such contests are even now well known, or have[1084] but lately disappeared; and some of them may owe their origin to a fight for the Corn-spirit. Mannhardt gives some examples—one very curious one from Granada, and one from Brittany. At Derby, Hawick, Ludlow, and other places in this country, they or the recollection of them may still be found.