because he stood to the doomed man in the relation of a sponsor. Xipe represents the earth “flayed,” that is bare, and ready for sowing. The flaying of the captive and the dressing of the god’s representative in the skin may have been of the nature of sympathetic magic, as a suggestion to the earth to rehabilitate itself in its covering of yellow maize.
It is precisely the agricultural god whom in Mexico we must expect to find clothed in all the attributes of the warrior, and truly Xipe does not disappoint us in this respect. He is armed cap-à-pie, and his dress was the favourite harness of Mexican royalty when it went forth to battle, as witness the Spartan suggestion of Motecuhzoma to his brother on the eve of a great combat.60 The Codex Vaticanus A calls him “il guerreggiatore attristato.” Thus at his feast the sacrifice takes the form of a combat. Indeed, he represents the warrior caste, by the efforts of whom the altars of Mexico were supplied with human victims, and the maize-crop was consequently secured.
Xipe is in some measure associated with that sacred bird the quail, which has been connected with sacrifice in many lands. This bird frequently takes refuge in the last sheaves of grain in a harvest-field, and thus, perhaps, came to symbolize the corn-spirit driven from its last stronghold. In Normandy in the harvest-field the reapers pretend to catch a quail