sending him first into the world above. It was a long climb to the world
above and the tired little fellow, once safe, sat down by the sack.
After a while he cut a tiny hole in the bag, just to see what was in it,
but the Star People flew out and filled the heavens everywhere. Yet he
saved a few stars by grasping the neck of the sack, and sat there,
frightened and sad, when Utset, the First Mother, asked what he had done
with the beautiful Star People.

The Sky-father himself, in those early years of the New-making, spread
out his hand with the palm downward, and into all the wrinkles of his
hand set the semblance of shining yellow corn-grains, gleaming like
sparks of fire in the dark of the early World-dawn. "See," said
Sky-father to Earth-mother, "our children shall be guided by these when
the Sun-father is not near and thy mountain terraces are as darkness
itself. Then shall our children be guided by light." So Sky-father
created the stars. Then he said, "And even as these grains gleam upward
from the water, so shall seed grain like them spring up from the earth
when touched by water, to nourish our children." And he created the
golden Seed-stuff of the corn.

It is around the beautiful Corn Maidens that perhaps the most delicate
of all imagery clings, Maidens offended when the dancers sought their
presence all too freely, no longer holding them so precious as in the
olden time, so that, in white garments, they became invisible in the
thickening white mists. Then sadly and noiselessly they stole in amongst
the people and laid their corn wands down amongst the trays, and laid
their white broidered garments thereon, as mothers lay soft kilting over
their babes. Even as the mists became they, and with the mists drifting,
fled away, to the south Summer-land.