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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.
We would gladly have exchanged some of them for corn, but just as we were about to return to our tower, I discovered a few ears of maize still standing close to a wall. With much satisfaction I gathered all I could find. We had still more good fortune in store. Close to the front I caught sight of a she-goat with a young kid by her side.
Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old shepherd, whose head, which is covered by his cloak, they can never see, wandering on the downs, between two tides, round the little town placed so far out of the world, and who is guiding and walking before them, a he-goat with a man's face, and a she-goat with a woman's face, and both of them with white hair; and talking incessantly, quarreling in a strange language, and then suddenly ceasing to talk in order to bleat with all their might.
And the old Queen, seeing that her game was played out that the cards had all gone against her that her son was doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that there was nothing left for her but to die. In a week she was dead, and men spoke no more of Catharine de' Medici, and thought no more of her than if in the words of a splenetic contemporary "she had been a dead she-goat."
The object of the festival, we are told, is to procure rain, plenty of food and drink, abundance of cattle and children and riches from Grandfather Sun. They pray that he may make every she-goat to cast two or three young, the people to multiply, the dead pigs to be replaced by living pigs, the empty rice-baskets to be filled, and so on.
"Then I remembered a trick of my own people in Sonora, and I took the blind pups of a dog, living far from here, and placed each of them with a she-goat having one newborn kid; and while the kid was sucking at one teat the mother could not help but let down milk for the puppy at the other, until at last when the dog smell had left him she adopted him for her own.
And God continued and revealed to Abraham the course of Israel's history and the history of the whole world: The heifer of three years indicates the dominion of Babylon, the she-goat of three years stands for the empire of the Greeks, the ram of three years for the Medo-Persian power, the rule of Ishmael is represented by the ram, and Israel is the innocent dove.
Meantime, I will only say that sometimes the princess who is thus to be rescued is enchanted in the form of a snake, sometimes of a she-goat, sometimes of a bird; and in one of the stories she herself, in the shape of a monster like a hedgehog, comes out of a coffin to tear the hero in pieces.
Captain Cobb was not disregardful of his creature comforts, and in order to supply himself with milk for breakfast and tea, he had shipped on board, some time back, a she-goat, which fully answered his wishes. Seamen will make pets of everything monkeys, babies, lions, pigs, bears, dogs, and cats.
But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said, my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive; and particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young.
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