This feast is made comming from the chacra or farme unto the house,
   saying certaine songs, and praying that the Mays (maize) may long
   continue, the which they call Mama cora.

What a chance this word offers to etymologists of the old school:  how promptly they would recognise, in mama mother—­[Greek], and in cora—­[Greek], the Mother and the Maiden, the feast of Demeter and Persephone!  However, the days of that old school of antiquarianism are numbered.  To return to the Peruvian harvest home:—­

They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays that growes in their farmes, the which they put in a certaine granary which they do calle Pirua, with certaine ceremonies, watching three nightes; they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and, being thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances, and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved.  In this moneth they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of this Pirua, ’if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next yeare,’ and if it answers ‘no,’ then they carry this Mays to the farme to burne, whence they brought it, according to every man’s power, then they make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they renue it, to the ende that the seede of the Mays may not perish.

The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise us; the Mexican held much the same belief, according to Sahagun:—­

It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the ground, he who saw them lying there was bound to lift them, wherein, if he failed, he harmed the maize, which plained itself of him to God, saying, ’Lord, punish this man, who saw me fallen and raised me not again; punish him with famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.’

Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian Mama cora, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of human nature.  We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians and Scotch are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they met each other, and borrowed each other’s superstitions.  Again, when we find Odysseus sacrificing a black sheep to the dead, {20} and when we read that the Ovahereroes in South Africa also appease with a black sheep the spirits of the departed, we do not feel it necessary to hint that the Ovahereroes are of Greek descent, or have borrowed their ritual from the Greeks.  The connection between the colour black, and mourning for the dead, is natural and almost universal.