50 WOMAN AS WITCH 



and that the hard work of the world must be left to 

 men. If I wished to give a full picture of what woman 

 accomplished for the first time in the world, and what 

 she is in many parts still undertaking, it would be hard 

 to do so better than by quoting the following words 

 from the recent report of an American Consul in 

 Germany : 



American readers will hardly understand how it can be that the 

 severest part of existence in this whole region falls to the lot of 

 woman. But such is the fact. She is the servant and the burden- 

 bearer. . . . The chief pursuits of women in this district (Sonne- 

 berg) are not of a gentle or refining character. They perform by 

 far the greater part of all the outdoor manual service. The plant- 

 ing and the sowing, including the preparation of the soil, therefore, 

 is done by them. I have seen many a woman in the last few weeks 

 holding the plough, drawn by a pair of cows, and still more of them 

 carrying manure into the fields in baskets strapped to their backs. 

 They also do much of the haying, including the mowing and the 

 pitching ; likewise the harvesting ; after which they thrash much 

 of the grain with the old-fashioned hand flail. They accompany 

 the coal carts through the city, and put the coal into the cellars 

 while the male driver sits upon his seat. They carry on nearly all 

 the dairy business, and draw the milk into town in a hand-cart, a 

 woman and a dog usually constituting the team. 



Here we have a wonderfully suggestive fossil of 

 woman in the mother-age primitive woman, the first 

 agriculturist, shouldering the pitchfork, the symbol of 

 her deity, and accompanied by the creature of her 

 goddess her friend and helper, the dog. 



