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
[Greek], 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--[Greek], and in
cora--[Greek], 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,