It was to this private _eiresione_ that the familiar passages in Aristophanes allude. Demos hearing a noise at his front door, jumps to the conclusion that a street brawl is imminent: “Who’s making that hullaballoo?” he cries; “away from my door. What, will ye tear down my _eiresione_?”[340] His dread is that his harvest-branch will be requisitioned as a weapon of offence, a possible application of it also alluded to by the poet in another passage.[341] Elsewhere it is jestingly said of a dried-up old woman, that if a spark fell on her, she would burn up like an old _eiresione_,[342] a comparison which throws light on the mode of disposing of the last year’s branch. The _Oschophoria_, or carrying in procession of the _oschos_, a vine-branch with the ripe grapes upon it, was another of the Athenian harvest festivals, and is interesting in the present connection from its being associated, like some modern harvest observances, with a racing competition. These festivals, which were probably of prehistoric origin, were in classical times sanctified for the popular mind by being linked with and accounted for by some legendary event which appealed to the patriotic sentiment. But in spite of this they would appear in course of time to have undergone something of the same debasement as our own May observances, and degenerated into a begging procession from door to door. At any rate the word _eiresione_, originally applied to the festival hymn as well as to the branch, became in later times the general name for all begging-songs. Initially, however, the _eiresione_ was, no doubt, a symbolical representation of the genius of vegetation, and as such was addressed as a person.[343]