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 Tezcatlipoca, 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.[11]

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