He eats of it, but cuts off the tail and sticks
it in the field; it is believed that the ears of corn will then grow
as long as the tail. Here the pig is the corn-spirit, whose
fertilising power is sometimes supposed to lie especially in his
tail. As a pig he is put in the ground at sowing-time, and as a pig
he reappears amongst the ripe corn at harvest. For amongst the
neighbouring Esthonians, as we have seen, the last sheaf is called
the Rye-boar. Somewhat similar customs are observed in Germany. In
the Salza district, near Meiningen, a certain bone in the pig is
called "the Jew on the winnowing-fan." The flesh of this bone is
boiled on Shrove Tuesday, but the bone is put amongst the ashes
which the neighbours exchange as presents on St. Peter's Day (the
twenty-second of February), and then mix with the seedcorn. In the
whole of Hesse, Meiningen, and other districts, people eat pea-soup
with dried pig-ribs on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas. The ribs are then
collected and hung in the room till sowing-time, when they are
inserted in the sown field or in the seed-bag amongst the flax seed.
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