s breast-bone
the character of the coming winter can be foreseen. The white in it is a
sign of snow, the brown of very great cold. Similar ideas can be traced
in Germany, though there is not always agreement as to what the white and
the brown betoken.{71}

At St. Peter's, Athlone, Ireland, a very obviously sacrificial custom
lasted on into the nineteenth century. Every household would kill an
animal of some kind, and sprinkle the threshold with its blood. A cow or
sheep, a goose or turkey, or merely a cock or hen, was used according to
the means of the family.{72} It seems that the animal was actually
offered to St. Martin, apparently as |204| the successor of some god,
and bad luck came if the custom were not observed. Probably these rites
were transferred to Martinmas from the old Celtic festival of _Samhain_.
Again, in a strange Irish legend the saint himself is said to have been
cut up and eaten in the form of an ox.{73}

In the wine-producing regions of Germany Martinmas was the day for the
first drinking of the new wine, and the feasting in general on his day
gave the saint the reputation of a guzzler and a glutton; it even became
customary to speak of a person who had squandered his substance in
riotous living as a _Martinsmann_.{74} As we have seen survivals of
sacrifice in the Martinmas slaughter, so we may regard the _Martinsminne_
or toast as originating in a sacrifice of liquor.{75} In the Boehmerwald
it is believed that wine taken at Martinmas brings strength and beauty,
and the lads and girls gather in the inns to drink, while a common German
proverb runs:--

"Heb an Martini,
Trink Wein per circulum anni."[91]{76}

Here, by the way, is a faint suggestion that Martinmas is regarded as the
beginning of the year; as such it certainly appears in a number of legal
customs, English, French, and German, which existed in the Middle Ages
and in some cases in quite recent times. It was often at Martinmas that
leases ended, rents had to be paid, and farm-servants changed their
places.{77}

There is a survival, perhaps, of a cereal sacrifice or sacrament in the
so-called "Martin's horns," horseshoe pastries given at Martinmas in many
parts of Germany.{78} Another kind of sacrifice is suggested by a Dutch
custom of throwing baskets of fruit into Martinmas bonfires, and by a
German custom of casting in empty fruit-baskets.{79} In Venetia the
peasants keep over from the vintage a few grapes to form part of t