Mecan emäg, the mistress of the forest, is the female partner of the Veps forest master. Veps tradition pictured the spirit-owners of natural and domestic spaces as households: the master (ižand) as a rule had a wife-mistress (emäg) and sometimes children, and the forest family together governed the game, the grazing herds sent into the woods for the summer, and the fate of anyone who wandered there. Herdsmen and hunters addressed the forest's hosts with spoken formulas and small offerings, and cattle or people who went missing were believed to be held by the forest household until it was ritually petitioned to let them go.