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Updated: April 30, 2025
We steamed away again, after landing our letters, close past the dear old Mewstone. The warrener's hut stood on it still: and I wondered whether the old he-goat, who used to terrify me as a boy, had left any long-bearded descendants.
That idiot of a Prefect's son, who has heard me talk a hundred times of Medea da Carpi, suddenly recollects that, when he was a child at Urbania, his nurse used to threaten him with a visit from Madonna Medea, who rode in the sky on a black he-goat. My Duchess Medea turned into a bogey for naughty little boys! Nov. 20th.
And there is a legend that the Delphian oracle told him that Aphrodite would be his guide and fellow-traveller, and that when he was sacrificing a she-goat to her by the seaside, it became a he-goat; wherefore the goddess is called Epitragia.
At Tettnang, in Würtemburg, the thresher who gives the last stroke to the last bundle of corn before it is turned goes by the name of the He-goat, and it is said, "He has driven the He-goat away." The person who, after the bundle has been turned, gives the last stroke of all, is called the She-goat. In this custom it is implied that the corn is inhabited by a pair of corn-spirits, male and female.
He went to another old woman, "Hide my hen for me." "Put her on the stake to which I tie my he-goat." At night he took away the hen. The next morning he demanded his hen. "Look for her where you hid her." "Give me my hen." "Take the he-goat." He went to another old woman, "O old woman, hide this goat for me." "Tie him to the sheep's crib." During the night he took away the buck.
"We are out at last," said the hunter, in his deep tones. "Off with the awning, Muata; let us breathe again." The awning was thrown back, and the boys sat up, drawing in the air in great gulps. "This is but the beginning," said the woman. "A little further and your eyes will rest on the gardens below and the hilltops above. You will skip like the he-goat from rock to rock.
Then she gave a loud cry, and ere I could think, up came ten damsels and threw me on the ground; whereupon she rose and taking a knife, said, "I will slaughter thee like a he-goat; and that will be less than thy desert, for thy behaviour to me and to thy cousin before me."
And if the laggard is a man, they imitate the cry with which they call a he-goat; if a woman, the cry with which they call a she-goat. Near Straubing, in Lower Bavaria, it is said of the man who cuts the last corn that "he has the Corn-goat, or the Wheat-goat, or the Oats-goat," according to the crop. Moreover, two horns are set up on the last heap of corn, and it is called "the horned Goat."
The three principal witch gatherings of the year were held on the days of great pagan festivals, which were afterwards adopted by the Church. Maury supposes the witches' Sabbath to be derived from the rites of Bacchus Sabazius, and accounts in this way for the Devil's taking the shape of a he-goat.
Take heart, my horned goats, to-morrow I will dip you all in the fountain of Sybaris. Thou white he-goat, I will beat thee if thou dare to touch one of the herd before I sacrifice the lamb to the nymphs. There he is at it again! Call me Melanthius, not Comatas, if I do not cudgel thee.
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