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Still the writings even of these town-bred
and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as
rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show. Thus the
story that Iasion begat a child Plutus ( "wealth," "abundance") by
Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field, may be compared with the West
Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest-field.
In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the
Corn-mother (Zytniamatka_); the pretended child represents the
Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next
year. The custom and the legend alike point to an older practice of
performing, among the sprouting crops in spring or the stubble in
autumn, one of those real or mimic acts of procreation by which, as
we have seen, primitive man often seeks to infuse his own vigorous
life into the languid or decaying energies of nature. Another
glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded
farther on, when we come to deal with another aspect of those
agricultural divinities.


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