On the whole,
then, as Mannhardt argues, the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns perhaps
belong to a widely diffused class of wood-spirits conceived in
goat-form. The fondness of goats for straying in woods and nibbling
the bark of trees, to which indeed they are most destructive, is an
obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits should so
often be supposed to take the form of goats. The inconsistency of a
god of vegetation subsisting upon the vegetation which he
personifies is not one to strike the primitive mind. Such
inconsistencies arise when the deity, ceasing to be immanent in the
vegetation, comes to be regarded as its owner or lord; for the idea
of owning the vegetation naturally leads to that of subsisting on
it. Sometimes the corn-spirit, originally conceived as immanent in
the corn, afterwards comes to be regarded as its owner, who lives on
it and is reduced to poverty and want by being deprived of it. Hence
he is often known as "the Poor Man" or "the Poor Woman."
Occasionally the last sheaf is left standing on the field for "the
Poor Old Woman" or for "the Old Rye-woman.
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