with corn-ears or with a silken band; the other delivers a rhyming address. The following are specimens of the speeches made by the reaper on these occasions. In some parts of Pomerania every passer-by is stopped, his way being barred with a corn-rope. The reapers form a circle round him and sharpen their scythes, while their leader says "The men are ready, The scythes are bent, The corn is great and small, The gentleman must be mowed." At Then the process of whetting the scythes is repeated.1 Ramin, in the district of Stettin, the stranger, standing encircled by the reapers, is thus addressed "We'll stroke the gentleman With our naked sword, Wherewith we shear meadows and fields. We shear princes and lords. Labourers are often athirst; If the gentleman will stand beer and brandy The joke will soon be over. But, if our prayer he does not like, The sword has a right to strike.” 2 That in these customs the whetting of the scythes is really meant as a preliminary to mowing appears from the following variation of the preceding customs. In the district of Lüneburg when any one enters the harvest-field, he is asked whether he will engage a good fellow. If he says yes, the harvesters mow some swaths, yelling and screaming, and then ask him for drink-money.3 On the threshing-floor strangers are also regarded as embodiments of the corn-spirit, and are treated accordingly. At Wiedingharde in Schleswig when a stranger comes to the threshing-floor he is asked, "Shall I teach you the flaildance?" If he says yes, they put the arms of the threshingflail round his neck as if he were a sheaf of corn, and press them together so tight that he is nearly chocked. In 1 W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 39 sq. 2 Ibid. p. 40. For the speeches made by the woman who binds the stranger or the master, see ibid. p. 41; Lemke, Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen, i. 23 sq. 3 W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 41 sq. 4 W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 42. some parishes of Wermland (Sweden), when a stranger enters the threshing-floor where the threshers are at work, they say that "they will teach him the threshing-song." Then they put a flail round his neck and a straw rope about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a stranger woman enters the threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail round her body and a wreath of corn-stalks round her neck, and call out, "See the Corn-woman! See! that is how the Corn-maiden looks!" 1 In these customs, observed both on the harvest-field and on the threshing-floor, a passing stranger is regarded as a personification of the corn, in other words, as the corn-spirit ; and a show is made of treating him like the corn by mowing, binding, and threshing him. If the reader still doubts whether European peasants can really regard a passing stranger in this light, the following custom should set their doubts at rest. During the madder-harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand a stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder-roots will sometimes call out to them Koortspillers (a term of reproach). Upon this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and, if they catch him, they bring him back to the madder-field and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least, jeering at him the while; then they ease nature before his face.2 This last act is to be explained as follows. The spirit of the corn and of other cultivated plants is sometimes conceived, not as immanent in the plant, but as its owner; hence the cutting of the corn at harvest, the digging of the roots, and the gathering of fruit from the fruit-trees are each and all of them acts of spoliation, which strip him of his property and reduce him to poverty. Hence he is often known as "the Poor Man" "the Poor Woman." Thus in the neighbourhood of or 1 W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 42. See above, p. 182. In Thüringen a being called the Rush-cutter used to be much dreaded. On the morning of St. John's Day he was wont to walk through the fields with sickles tied to his ankles cutting avenues in the corn as he walked. To detect him, seven bundles of brushwood were silently threshed with the flail on the threshing-floor, and the stranger who appeared at the door of the barn during the threshing was the Rush-cutter. See Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 221. With the Binsenschneider compare the Bilschneider and Biberschneider (Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. p. 210 sq. $$ 372-378.) 2 W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 47 sq. 2 Eisenach a small sheaf is sometimes left standing on the field for "the Poor Old Woman."1 At Marksuhl, near Eisenach, the puppet formed out of the last sheaf is itself called "the Poor Woman." At Alt Lest in Silesia the man who binds the last sheaf is called the Beggar-man. In a village near Roeskilde, in Zealand (Denmark), old-fashioned peasants sometimes make up the last sheaf into a rude. puppet, which is called the Rye-beggar. In Southern Schonen the sheaf which is bound last is called the Beggar ; it is made bigger than the rest and is sometimes dressed in clothes. In the district of Olmütz the last sheaf is called the Beggar; it is given to an old woman, who must carry it home, limping on one foot. Thus when the spirit of vegetation is conceived as a being who is robbed of his store and 1 W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 48. To prevent a rationalistic explanation of this custom, which, like most rationalistic explanations of folk-custom, would be wrong, it may be pointed out that a little of the crop is sometimes left on the field for the spirit under other names than "the Poor Old Woman." Thus in a village of the Tilsit district, the last sheaf was left standing on the field "for the Old Rye-woman" (M.F. p. 337). In Neftenbach (Canton of Zurich) the first three ears of corn reaped are thrown away on the field "to satisfy the Cornmother and to make the next year's crop abundant" (ibid.). In Thüringen when the after-grass (Grummet) is being got in, a little heap is left lying on the field; it belongs to "the Little Wood-woman" in return for the bless ing she has bestowed (Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 224). At Kupferberg, Bavaria, some corn is left standing on the field when the rest has been cut. Of this corn left standing, they say that "it belongs to the Old Woman," to whom it is dedicated in the following words "We give it to the Old Woman; She shall keep it. Next year may she be to us As kind as this time she has been." M.F. p. 337 sq. These last expressions are quite conclusive. 8 Russia a patch of unreaped corn is left in the field and the ears are knotted together; this is called "the plaiting of the beard of Volos." "The unreaped patch is looked upon as tabooed; and it is believed that if any one meddles with it he will shrivel up, and become twisted like the interWoven ears (Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 251). In the northeast of Scotland a few stalks were sometimes left unreaped for the benefit of "the aul' man (W. Gregor, Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 182). Here "the aul' man is probably the equivalent of the Old Man (der Alte) of Germany. At Lindau in Anhalt the reapers used to leave some stalks standing in the last corner of the last field for the "Corn-woman (Kornmume) to eat" (Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897), p. 154). In some parts of Bavaria three handfuls of flax were left on the field "for the Wood-woman" (Bavaria, Landes und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, iii. 343 sq.). In the island of Nias, to prevent the depredations of wandering spirits among the rice at harvest, a miniature field is dedicated to them in which are sown all the plants that grow in the real fields (E. Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias, p. 593). 2 M.F. p. 48. 3 Ibid. p. 48 sq. impoverished by the harvesters, it is natural that his representative-the passing stranger-should upbraid them; and it is equally natural that they should seek to disable him from pursuing them and recapturing the stolen property. Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves, for a certain time, against interruption.1 Hence when madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger whom they have caught and buried in the field, we may infer that they consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed. Regarded as such, he must be the natural owner of the madder-roots, that is, their spirit or demon; and this conception is carried out by burying him, like the madder-roots, in the ground.2 The Greeks, it may be observed, were quite familiar with the idea that a passing stranger may be a god. Homer says that the gods in the likeness of foreigners roam up and down cities. Once in Poso, a district of Celebes, when a new missionary entered a house where a number of people were gathered round a sick man, one of them addressed the newcomer in these words: "Well, sir, as we had never seen you before, and you came suddenly in, while we sat here by ourselves, we thought it was a spirit." 3 5 Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural implements, and thrown into the water." These coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter is a genuine description of an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most enacted only in mimicry, it is desirable to show that in rude society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural 1 W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 49 sq. ; Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 400; Töppen, Aberglaube aus Masuren,2 p. 57. 2 The explanation of the custom is Mannhardt's. M.F. p. 49. 3 Odyssey, xvii. 485 sqq. Cp. Plato, Sophist, p. 216 A. eerste A. C. Kruijt, "Mijne ervaringen te Poso," Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxxvi. (1892), p. 402. For throwing him into the water, see p. 231. ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields. examples will make this plain. » 2 The following The Indians of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields.1 At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the first-fruits of the season were offered to the sun, a criminal was placed between two immense stones, balanced opposite each other, and was crushed by them as they fell together. His remains were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This sacrifice was known as "the meeting of the stones.' Another series of human sacrifices offered in Mexico to make the maize thrive has been already referred to.3 The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The victim was a captive of either sex. He was clad in the gayest and most costly attire, was fattened on the choicest food, and carefully kept in ignorance of his doom. When he was fat enough, they bound him to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced a solemn dance, then cleft his head with a tomahawk and shot him with arrows. According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim's body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another trader who had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account has been preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in April 1837 or 1838. The girl had been kept for six months and well treated. Two days before the sacrifice she was led from wigwam to wigwam, accompanied by the whole council of chiefs and warriors. At each lodge she received a small billet of wood and a little paint, which she handed to 1 Cieza de Leon, Travels, translated by Markham, p. 203 (Hakluyt Society, 1864). 2 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de PAmérique Centrale, i. 274; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 340. 3 See above, p. 143. |