Christmas gift-bringer the leader of the Wild Hunt at the time of Yule. Santa Claus's reindeer has also been compared to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin in Norse mythology. Jacob Grimm ("Deutsche Mythologie") traces the threatening or scary companions of Saint Nicholas (such as the Krampus of the Austro-Bavarian dialect region) to Christianized versions of house-spirits (kobolds, elves). After Christianization, the benign mid-winter gift-bringer was associated with the 4th-century Christian Saint Nicholas of Myra. This association took place mainly in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, including German-speaking Europe, the Low Countries, the Czech lands, Hungary and Slovenia. The basis
Eight-legged essay exams themselves and the other for public purposes. After the test-takers finished with their exams, their papers were collected in the testing room and sent over to be graded. They were then printed with the graders' comments and in the order of the score rank. During the late Ming Dynasty, commercial publishing also increased in the face of increasing commercialization of culture. The public printing, publishing, and dissemination of the essays prompted more people to be interested candidates of the civil service examination during the Ming and Qing dynasties. One virtue of the eight-legged essays is that its composition is