suggestive of felling jungle; and he then inquired how long I had been listening to them.  Now thoroughly aroused, I replied that I had heard the sounds for some time, at first confusing them with my dreams, but soon sufficiently awakening to the fact that they were no mere phantoms of my imagination, but a reality.  During our conversation the noises became more distinct and loud; blow after blow resounded, as of the axe descending upon the tree, followed by the crash of the falling timber.  Renewed blows announced the repetition of the operations on another tree, and continued till several were devastated.

It is unnecessary to tell more of the tale.  In spite of minute examinations and close search, no solution of the mystery of the noises, on this or any other occasion, was ever found.  The natives, of course, attributed the disturbance to the Pezazi, or goblin.  No one, perhaps, has asserted that the Aztecs were connected by ties of race with the people of Ceylon.  Yet, when the Spaniards conquered Mexico, and when Sahagun (one of the earliest missionaries) collected the legends of the people, he found them, like the Cingalese, strong believers in the mystic tree-felling.  We translate Sahagun’s account of the ‘midnight axe’:—

When so any man heareth the sound of strokes in the night, as if one were felling trees, he reckons it an evil boding.  And this sound they call youaltepuztli (youalli, night; and tepuztli, copper), which signifies ‘the midnight hatchet.’  This noise cometh about the time of the first sleep, when all men slumber soundly, and the night is still.  The sound of strokes smitten was first noted by the temple-servants, called tlamacazque, at the hour when they go in the night to make their offering of reeds or of boughs of pine, for so was their custom, and this penance they did on the neighbouring hills, and that when the night was far spent.  Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes when he splits wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar off), they drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid, and said that the sounds were part of the witchery of Tezeatlipoca, that often thus dismayeth men who journey in the night.  Now, when tidings of these things came to a certain brave man, one exercised in war, he drew near, being guided by the sound, till he came to the very cause of the hubbub.  And when he came upon it, with difficulty he caught it, for the thing was hard to catch: natheless at last he overtook that which ran before him; and behold, it was a man without a heart, and, on either side of the chest, two holes that opened and shut, and so made the noise.  Then the man put his hand within the breast of the figure and grasped the breast and shook it hard, demanding some grace or gift.

As a rule, the grace demanded was power to make captives in war.  The curious coincidence of the ‘midnight axe,’ occurring in lands so remote as Ceylon and Mexico, and the singular attestation by an English lady of the actual existence of the disturbance, makes this youaltepuztli one of the quaintest things in the province of the folklorist.  But, whatever the cause of the noise, or of the beliefs connected with the noise, may be, no one would explain them as the result of community of race between Cingalese and Aztecs.  Nor would this explanation be offered to account for the Aztec and English belief that the creaking of furniture is an omen of death in a house.  Obviously, these opinions are the expression of a common state of superstitious fancy, not the signs of an original community of origin.

Let us take another piece of folklore.  All North-country English folk know the Kernababy.  The custom of the ‘Kernababy’ is commonly observed in England, or, at all events, in Scotland, where the writer has seen many a kernababy.  The last gleanings of the last field are bound up in a rude imitation of the human shape, and dressed in some tag-rags of finery.  The usage has fallen into the conservative hands of children, but of old ‘the Maiden’ was a regular image of the harvest goddess, which, with a sickle and sheaves in her arms, attended by a crowd of reapers, and accompanied with music, followed the last carts home to the farm. {18}  It is odd enough that the ‘Maiden’ should exactly translate Κορη, the old Sicilian name of the daughter of Demeter.  ‘The Maiden’ has dwindled, then, among us to the rudimentary kernababy; but ancient Peru had her own Maiden, her Harvest Goddess.  Here it is easy to trace the natural idea at the basis of the superstitious practice which links the shores of the Pacific with our own northern coast.  Just as a portion of the yule-log and of the Christmas bread were kept all the year through, a kind of nest-egg of plenteous food and fire, so the kernababy, English or Peruvian, is an earnest that corn will not fail all through the year, till next harvest comes.  For this reason the kernababy used to be treasured from autumn’s end to autumn’s end, though now it commonly disappears very soon after the harvest home.  It is thus that Acosta describes, in Grimston’s old translation (1604), the Peruvian kernababy and the Peruvian harvest home:—

This feast is made comming from the chacra or farme unto the house, saying certaine songs, and praying that the Mays (maize) may long continue, the which they call Mama cora.

What a chance this word offers to etymologists of the old school: how promptly they would recognise, in mama mother—μητηρ, and in cora—κορη, the Mother and the Maiden, the feast of Demeter and Persephone!  However, the days of that old school of antiquarianism are numbered.  To return to the Peruvian harvest home:—

They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays that growes in their farmes, the which they put in a certaine granary which they do calle Pirua, with certaine ceremonies, watching three nightes; they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and, being thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances, and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved.  In this moneth they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of this Pirua, ‘if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next yeare,’ and if it answers ‘no,’ then they carry this Mays to the farme to burne, whence they brought it, according to every man’s power, then they make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they renue it, to the ende that the seede of the Mays may not perish.

The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise us; the Mexican held much the same belief, according to Sahagun:—

It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the ground, he who saw them lying there was bound to lift them, wherein, if he failed, he harmed the maize, which plained itself of him to God, saying, ‘Lord, punish this man, who saw me fallen and raised me not again; punish him with famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.’

Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian Mama cora, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of human nature.  We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians and Scotch are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they met each other, and borrowed each other’s superstitions.  Again, when we find Odysseus sacrificing a black sheep to the dead, {20} and when we