She
presides over the pleasant, significant details of the farm, the
threshing-floor, and the full granary, and stands beside the
woman baking bread at the oven. With these fancies are connected
certain simple rites, the half-understood local observance and
the half-believed local legend reacting capriciously on each
other. They leave her a fragment of bread and a morsel of meat at
the crossroads to take on her journey; and perhaps some real
Demeter carries them away, as she wanders through the country.
The incidents of their yearly labour become to them acts of
worship; they seek her blessing through many expressive names,
and almost catch sight of her at dawn or evening, in the nooks of
the fragrant fields. She lays a finger on the grass at the
roadside, and some new flower comes up. All the picturesque
implements of country life are hers; the poppy also, emblem of an
exhaustless fertility, and full of mysterious juices for the
alleviation of pain. The country-woman who puts her child to
sleep in the great, cradle-like basket for winnowing the corn
remembers Demeter _Kourotrophos_, the mother of corn and
children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress worn
by its father at his initiation into her mysteries.
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