no grown-up person
would take the mimic Martin or Nicholas |206| seriously nowadays, there
seem to be at the root of them things once regarded as of vital moment.
Just as fairy-tales, originally serious attempts to explain natural
facts, have now become reading for children, so ritual practices which
our ancestors deemed of vast importance for human welfare have become
mere games to amuse the young.

On St. Martin's Eve, to come back from speculation to the facts of
popular custom, the saint appears in the nurseries of Antwerp and other
Flemish towns. He is a man dressed up as a bishop, with a pastoral staff
in his hand. His business is to ask if the children have been "good," and
if the result of his inquiries is satisfactory he throws down apples,
nuts, and cakes. If not, it is rods that he leaves behind. At Ypres he
does not visibly appear, but children hang up stockings filled with hay,
and next morning find presents in them, left by the saint in gratitude
for the fodder provided for his horse. He is there imagined as a rider on
a white horse, and the same conception prevails in Austrian Silesia,
where he brings the "Martin's horns" already mentioned.{85} In Silesia
when it snows at Martinmas people say that the saint is coming on his
white horse, and there, it may be noted, the _Schimmelreiter_ appears at
the same season.{86} In certain respects, it has been suggested, St.
Martin may have taken the place of Woden.{87} It is perhaps not without
significance that, like the god, he is a military hero, and conceived as
a rider on horseback. At Duesseldorf he used to be represented in his
festival procession by a man riding on another fellow's back.{88}

At Mechlin and other places children go round from house to house,
singing and collecting gifts. Often four boys with paper caps on their
heads, dressed as Turks, carry a sort of litter whereon St. Martin sits.
He has a long white beard of flax and a paper mitre and stole, and holds
a large wooden spoon to receive apples and other eatables that are given
to the children, as well as a leather purse for offerings of money.{89}

In the Ansbach region a different type of being used to
appear--Pelzmaerten (Skin Martin) by name; he ran about and frightened the
children, before he threw them their apples and nuts. In several places
in Swabia, too, Pelzmaerte was known; |207| he had a black face, a
cow-bell hung on his person, and he distributed blows as well as nuts and
app