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