Traditionally, the essential energy for ploughing the fields was supplied by water buffaloes. Although during the past decades virtually all have been replaced by motorized ploughs (the ‘iron buffaloes’), the powerful animal with its huge horns has survived as a symbol of virility associated with the fertility of the land. In the second day’s major procession of the festival one sees models of water buffaloes made (like hobby-horses) from cloth being ‘ridden’ by farmers who charge towards the onlookers. What’s more, the group of — usually drunken — ‘mud men’ in the procession represents the fertility of the paddy, as they literally carry its soil on their bodies.