The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

§ 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives. 299we may conjecture that a pretence has been commonly made ofkilling the reaper and binder as well as the thresher of the lastcorn, and that in ancient times this killing was actually carried [254]out. This conjecture is corroborated by the common superstitionthat whoever cuts the last corn must die soon. 779 Sometimes it isthought that the person who binds the last sheaf on the field willdie in the course of next year. 780 The reason for fixing on thereaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the representativeof the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurkas long as he can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, thebinders, and the threshers at their work. But when he is forciblyexpelled from his refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheafbound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily assumes someother form than that of the corn-stalks which had hitherto beenhis garment or body. And what form can the expelled corn-spiritassume more naturally than that of the person who stands nearestto the corn from which he (the corn-spirit) has just been expelled?But the person in question is necessarily the reaper, binder, orthresher of the last corn. He or she, therefore, is seized andtreated as the corn-spirit himself.Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as therepresentative of the corn-spirit may have been either a passingstranger or the harvester who was last at reaping, binding, orthreshing. But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legendand modern folk-custom alike point. Lityerses not only putstrangers to death; he was himself slain, and apparently in thesame way as he had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in acorn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is impliedthat this happened to Lityerses on his own land. 781 Similarlyin modern harvest-customs the pretence of killing appears to becarried out quite as often on the person of the master (farmer or779 W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 5.780 H. Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste (Hanover, 1878), p. 98.781 Above, p. 217. It is not expressly said that he was wrapt in a sheaf.Perhaps the victimannually sacrificedin the character ofthe corn-spirit mayhave been the kinghimself.