" The mocking offer of the
Mare to a laggard neighbour was sometimes responded to by a mocking
acceptance of her help. Thus an old man told an inquirer, "While we
wun at supper, a mon cumm'd wi' a autar [halter] to fatch her away."
At one place a real mare used to be sent, but the man who rode her
was subjected to some rough treatment at the farmhouse to which he
paid his unwelcome visit.
In the neighbourhood of Lille the idea of the corn-spirit in horse
form in clearly preserved. When a harvester grows weary at his work,
it is said, "He has the fatigue of the Horse." The first sheaf,
called the "Cross of the Horse," is placed on a cross of boxwood in
the barn, and the youngest horse on the farm must tread on it. The
reapers dance round the last blades of corn, crying, "See the
remains of the Horse." The sheaf made out of these last blades is
given to the youngest horse of the parish (_commune_) to eat. This
youngest horse of the parish clearly represents, as Mannhardt says,
the corn-spirit of the following year, the Corn-foal, which absorbs
the spirit of the old Corn-horse by eating the last corn cut; for,
as usual, the old corn-spirit takes his final refuge in the last
sheaf.
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