42 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



corn and its reappearance after sowing, at which period the festival was 

 sometimes held ; later the spirit of the corn was held to reside in some 

 animal, perhaps an animal caught in the centre of the field, and later still 

 the place of the animal was taken by the last sheaf of corn cut, or the last 

 ears of corn. The last sheaf in Scotland is still called the " harvest maiden," 

 a term which points back, perhaps, to the original custom. 



The same custom is probably the basis of the Greek myth of Demeter 

 and Persephone. 



In the same way the immolation of wives, slaves, horses, and dogs at the 

 burial of a chief has been refined in different countries in different ways ; in 

 Japan and Egypt at an early date, pictures, images, or dolls were substituted 

 for the persons themselves or the animals ; in our own country, the horse 

 of the soldier may still be led behind the bier to the grave of his master, but 

 is no longer put to death. Again the primitive custom of setting out food 

 for the dead, and supplying him with his property for use in the other world, 

 has also in Egypt and elsewhere been lightened by the use of imitation food, 

 imitation dishes, paper garments, and paper coins. 



Let us take then as an example the beliefs in " fairies " in our own and 

 other Celtic countries, and attempt to trace it back to the primitive habits 

 out of which it arose, and to determine which of our familiar mental 

 processes are to be held accountable for these beginnings. 



In all the specially Celtic countries, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of 

 Man, Cornwall, and Brittany, the belief in fairies is universally found ; not, of 

 course, by any means so powerful as it was fifty or a hundred years ago, but 

 still so strong that Dr. Wentz, in the year 1909, found people from all ranks, 

 peasants, priests, protestant ministers, and scholars, who either claimed them- 

 selves to have seen the fairies, or asserted a firm conviction that a parent or 

 other intimate had seen and talked with them. Numerous tales were obtained, 

 evidently quite firmly believed in by the narrators, of changelings, of the 

 taking away of young men and women to the fairy country, of tricks played 

 upon men by fairies, of special gifts with which men were endowed by them. 



The following is a summary of the evidence he presents : As a rule 

 the fairy is described as small, from one to two feet high, dressed in bright 

 colours, the men in red and the women in green ; but there are exceptional 

 cases in Ireland where the fairies are pictured, or a special race of them, 



