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

§ 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives. 311would have an opportunity of comparing the various harvest criesof the different peoples. Thus we can readily understand whythese harvest cries were so often noted and compared with eachother by the Greeks. Whereas, if they had been regular songs,they could not have been heard at such distances, and thereforecould not have attracted the attention of so many travellers; and,moreover, even if the wayfarer were within hearing of them, hecould not so easily have picked out the words.Down to recent times Devonshire reapers uttered cries ofthe same sort, and performed on the field a ceremony exactlyanalogous to that in which, if I am not mistaken, the rites of Osirisoriginated. The cry and the ceremony are thus described by anobserver who wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century.“After the wheat is all cut, on most farms in the north of Devon,the harvest people have a custom of ‘crying the neck.’ I believethat this practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in that partof the country. It is done in this way. An old man, or some oneelse well acquainted with the ceremonies used on the occasion(when the labourers are reaping the last field of wheat), goesround to the shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle ofall the best ears he can find; this bundle he ties up very neat andtrim, and plats and arranges the straws very tastefully. This iscalled ‘the neck’ of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cutout, and the pitcher once more circulated, the reapers, binders,and the women stand round in a circle. The person with ‘theneck’ stands in the centre, grasping it with both his hands. Hefirst stoops and holds it near the ground, and all the men formingthe ring take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both [265]hands towards the ground. They then all begin at once in a veryprolonged and harmonious tone to cry ‘The neck!’ at the sametime slowly raising themselves upright, and elevating their armsand hats above their heads; the person with ‘the neck’ also raisingit on high. This is done three times. They then change theircry to ‘Wee yen!’—‘Way yen!’—which they sound in the sameCrying “the neck”at harvest inDevonshire.