Section 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives.
THE BARBAROUS rites just described offer analogies to the
harvest customs of Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to
the corn-spirit is shown equally in the savage custom of mixing
the victim's blood or ashes with the seed-corn and the European
custom of mixing the grain from the last sheaf with the young corn
in spring. Again, the identification of the person with the corn
appears alike in the savage custom of adapting the age and
stature of the victim to the age and stature, whether actual or
expected, of the crop; in the Scotch and Styrian rules that when
the corn-spirit is conceived as the Maiden the last corn shall be
cut by a young maiden, but when it is conceived as the
Corn-mother it shall be cut by an old woman; in the warning given
to old women in Lorraine to save themselves when the Old
Woman is being killed, that is, when the last corn is being
threshed; and in the Tyrolese expectation that if the man who
gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the next year's corn will be
tall also. Further, the same identification is implied in the savage
custom of killing the representative of the corn-spirit with hoes or
spades or by grinding him between stones, and in the European
custom of pretending to kill him with the scythe or the flail. Once
more the Khond custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the
victim is parallel to the European customs of pouring water on the
personal representative of the corn-spirit or plunging him into a
stream. Both the Khond and the European customs are
rain-charms. 1
To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shown that in
rude society human beings have been commonly killed to promote
the growth of the crops. There is therefore no improbability in the
supposition that they may once have been killed for a like purpose
in Phrygia and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European
folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other, point to the
conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at
least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story
and European harvest-customs agree in indicating that the victim
was put to death as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this
indication is in harmony with the view which some savages
appear to take of the victim slain to make the crops flourish. On
the whole, then, we may fairly suppose that both in Phrygia and in
Europe the representative of the corn-spirit was annually killed
upon the harvest-field. Grounds have been already shown for
believing that similarly in Europe the representative of the
tree-spirit was annually slain. The proofs of these two remarkable
and closely analogous customs are entirely independent of each
other. Their coincidence seems to furnish fresh presumption in
favour of both. 2
To the question, How was the representative of the corn-spirit
chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses
story and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were
regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut
or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is
not the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to
the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not simply
passing strangers, but persons whom he had vanquished in a
reaping contest and afterwards wrapt up in corn-sheaves and
beheaded. This suggests that the representative of the corn-spirit
may have been selected by means of a competition on the
harvest-field, in which the vanquished competitor was compelled
to accept the fatal honour. The supposition is countenanced by
European harvest-customs. We have seen that in Europe there is
sometimes a contest amongst the reapers to avoid being last, and
that the person who is vanquished in this competition, that is, who
cuts the last corn, is often roughly handled. It is true we have not
found that a pretence is made of killing him; but on the other hand
we have found that a pretence is made of killing the man who
gives the last stroke at threshing, that is, who is vanquished in the
threshing contest. Now, since it is in the character of
representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher of the last corn is
slain in mimicry, and since the same representative character
attaches (as we have seen) to the cutter and binder as well as to
the thresher of the last corn, and since the same repugnance is
evinced by harvesters to be last in any one of these labours, we
may conjecture that a pretence has been commonly made of
killing the reaper and binder as well as the thresher of the last
corn, and that in ancient times this killing was actually carried out.
This conjecture is corroborated by the common superstition that
whoever cuts the last corn must die soon. Sometimes it is thought
that the person who binds the last sheaf on the field will die in the
course of next year. The reason for fixing on the reaper, binder, or
thresher of the last corn as the representative of the corn-spirit
may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long as he can
in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the
threshers at their work. But when he is forcibly expelled from his
refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last grain
threshed, he necessarily assumes some other form than that of the
corn-stalks, which had hitherto been his garment or body. And
what form can the expelled corn-spirit assume more naturally than
that of the person who stands nearest to the corn from which he
(the corn-spirit) has just been expelled? But the person in
question is necessarily the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last
corn. He or she, therefore, is seized and treated as the corn-spirit
himself. 3
Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the
representative of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing
stranger or the harvester who was last at reaping, binding, or
threshing. But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legend
and modern folk-custom alike point. Lityerses not only put
strangers to death; he was himself slain, and apparently in the
same way as he had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in a
corn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is implied
that this happened to Lityerses on his own land. Similarly in
modern harvest-customs the pretence of killing appears to be
carried out quite as often on the person of the master (farmer or
squire) as on that of strangers. Now when we remember that
Lityerses was said to have been a son of the King of Phrygia, and
that in one account he is himself called a king, and when we
combine with this the tradition that he was put to death, apparently
as a representative of the corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture
that we have here another trace of the custom of annually slaying
one of those divine or priestly kings who are known to have held
ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and particularly in
Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen, to have been so
far modified in places that the king's son was slain in the king's
stead. Of the custom thus modified the story of Lityerses would be,
in one version at least, a reminiscence. 4
Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the
Phrygian Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinus-the seat of
a priestly kingship-the high-priest appears to have been annually
slain in the character of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis
was described by an ancient authority as "a reaped ear of corn."
Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in
the person of his representative, might be thought to be ultimately
identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic prototype
out of which the state religion of Attis was developed. It may have
been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European
folk-custom warns us that amongst the same people two distinct
deities of vegetation may have their separate personal
representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods at
different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have seen, it
appears that one man was commonly slain in the character of the
tree-spirit in spring, and another in the character of the corn-spirit
in autumn. It may have been so in Phrygia also. Attis was
especially a tree-god, and his connexion with corn may have
been only such an extension of the power of a tree-spirit as is
indicated in customs like the Harvest-May. Again, the
representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring;
whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn,
according to the time of the harvest in Phrygia. On the whole,
then, while we are not justified in regarding Lityerses as the
prototype of Attis, the two may be regarded as parallel products of
the same religious idea, and may have stood to each other as in
Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the Wild Man, the Leaf
Man, and so forth, of spring. Both were spirits or deities of
vegetation, and the personal representatives of both were
annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship became elevated
into the dignity of a state religion and spread to Italy, the rites of
Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their native
Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic ceremonies
performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few villages
may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to procure a
human victim to be slain as representative of the corn-spirit for
their common benefit. Such victims may have been drawn from the
families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would account for the
legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a Phrygian king or
as himself a king. When villages did not so club together, each
village or farm may have procured its own representative of the
corn-spirit by dooming to death either a passing stranger or the
harvester who cut, bound, or threshed the last sheaf. Perhaps in
the olden time the practice of head-hunting as a means of
promoting the growth of the corn may have been as common
among the rude inhabitants of Europe and Western Asia as it still
is, or was till lately, among the primitive agricultural tribes of
Assam, Burma, the Philippine Islands, and the Indian Archipelago.
It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the old
barbarous custom of killing a man on the harvest-field or the
threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a mere pretence long
before the classical era, and was probably regarded by the
reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a rough jest
which the license of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on
a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master himself. 5
I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so
many points of comparison with European and savage
folk-custom. The other harvest songs of Western Asia and Egypt,
to which attention has been called above, may now be dismissed
much more briefly. The similarity of the Bithynian Bormus to the
Phrygian Lityerses helps to bear out the interpretation which has
been given of the latter. Bormus, whose death or rather
disappearance was annually mourned by the reapers in a
plaintive song, was, like Lityerses, a king's son or at least the son
of a wealthy and distinguished man. The reapers whom he
watched were at work on his own fields, and he disappeared in
going to fetch water for them; according to one version of the story
he was carried off by the nymphs, doubtless the nymphs of the
spring or pool or river whither he went to draw water. Viewed in
the light of the Lityerses story and of European folk-custom, this
disappearance of Bormus may be a reminiscence of the custom of
binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into
the water. The mournful strain which the reapers sang was
probably a lamentation over the death of the corn-spirit, slain
either in the cut corn or in the person of a human representative;
and the call which they addressed to him may have been a prayer
that he might return in fresh vigour next year. 6
The Phoenician Linus song was sung at the vintage, at least in
the west of Asia Minor, as we learn from Homer; and this,
combined with the legend of Syleus, suggests that in ancient times
passing strangers were handled by vintagers and vine-diggers in
much the same way as they are said to have been handled by the
reaper Lityerses. The Lydian Syleus, so ran the legend,
compelled passers-by to dig for him in his vineyard, till Hercules
came and killed him and dug up his vines by the roots. This seems
to be the outline of a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither
ancient writers nor modern folk-custom enable us to fill in the
details. But, further, the Linus song was probably sung also by
Phoenician reapers, for Herodotus compares it to the Maneros
song, which, as we have seen, was a lament raised by Egyptian
reapers over the cut corn. Further, Linus was identified with
Adonis, and Adonis has some claims to be regarded as especially
a corn-deity. Thus the Linus lament, as sung at harvest, would be
identical with the Adonis lament; each would be the lamentation
raised by reapers over the dead spirit of the corn. But whereas
Adonis, like Attis, grew into a stately figure of mythology, adored
and mourned in splendid cities far beyond the limits of his
Phoenician home, Linus appears to have remained a simple ditty
sung by reapers and vintagers among the corn-sheaves and the
vines. The analogy of Lityerses and of folk-custom, both
European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia the slain
corn-spirit-the dead Adonis-may formerly have been represented
by a human victim; and this suggestion is possibly supported by
the Harran legend that Tammuz (Adonis) was slain by his cruel
lord, who ground his bones in a mill and scattered them to the
wind. For in Mexico, as we have seen, the human victim at
harvest was crushed between two stones; and both in Africa and
India the ashes or other remains of the victim were scattered over
the fields. But the Harran legend may be only a mythical way of
expressing the grinding of corn in the mill and the scattering of the
seed. It seems worth suggesting that the mock king who was
annually killed at the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea on the
sixteenth day of the month Lous may have represented Tammuz
himself. For the historian Berosus, who records the festival and its
date, probably used the Macedonian calendar, since he
dedicated his history to Antiochus Soter; and in his day the
Macedonian month Lous appears to have corresponded to the
Babylonian month Tammuz. If this conjecture is right, the view that
the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the character of a god
would be established. 7
There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain
corn-spirit-the dead Osiris-was represented by a human victim,
whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in
a dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding,
gave the name of Maneros. For the legend of Busiris seems to
preserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the
Egyptians in connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said
to have been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the
altar of Zeus. The origin of the custom was traced to a dearth
which afflicted the land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer
informed Busiris that the dearth would cease if a man were
annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted the sacrifice. But
when Hercules came to Egypt, and was being dragged to the altar
to be sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son.
Here then is a legend that in Egypt a human victim was annually
sacrificed to prevent the failure of the crops, and a belief is
implied that an omission of the sacrifice would have entailed a
recurrence of that infertility which it was the object of the sacrifice
to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we have seen, believed that an
omission of the human sacrifice at planting would have been
followed by a total failure of their crops. The name Busiris was in
reality the name of a city, pe-Asar, "the house of Osiris," the city
being so called because it contained the grave of Osiris. Indeed
some high modern authorities believe that Busiris was the original
home of Osiris, from which his worship spread to other parts of
Egypt. The human sacrifice were said to have been offered at his
grave, and the victims were red-haired men, whose ashes were
scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans. This tradition of
human sacrifices offered at the tomb of Osiris is confirmed by the
evidence of the monuments. 8
In the light of the foregoing discussion the Egyptian tradition of
Busiris admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation.
Osiris, the corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a
stranger, whose red hair made him a suitable representative of the
ripe corn. This man, in his representative character, was slain on
the harvest-field, and mourned by the reapers, who prayed at the
same time that the corn-spirit might revive and return
(mââ-ne-rha, Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following
year. Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the
ashes scattered by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise
them. Here the choice of the victim on the ground of his
resemblance to the corn which he was to represent agrees with
the Mexican and African customs already described. Similarly the
woman who died in the character of the Corn-mother at the
Mexican midsummer sacrifice had her face painted red and yellow
in token of the colours of the corn, and she wore a pasteboard
mitre surmounted by waving plumes in imitation of the tassel of the
maize. On the other hand, at the festival of the Goddess of the
White Maize the Mexicans sacrificed lepers. The Romans
sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring to avert the supposed
blighting influence of the Dog-star, believing that the crops would
thus grow ripe and ruddy. The heathen of Harran offered to the
sun, moon, and planets human victims who were chosen on the
ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to
which they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, clothed in red
and smeared with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man
to "the red planet Mars" in a temple which was painted red and
draped with red hangings. These and the like cases of assimilating
the victim to the god, or to the natural phenomenon which he
represents, are based ultimately on the principle of homoeopathic
or imitative magic, the notion being that the object aimed at will be
most readily attained by means of a sacrifice which resembles the
effect that it is designed to bring about. 9
The story that the fragments of Osiris's body were scattered up
and down the land, and buried by Isis on the spots where they
lay, may very well be a reminiscence of a custom, like that
observed by the Khonds, of dividing the human victim in pieces
and burying the pieces, often at intervals of many miles from each
other, in the fields. 10
Thus, if I am right, the key to the mysteries of Osiris is furnished
by the melancholy cry of the Egyptian reapers, which down to
Roman times could be heard year after year sounding across the
fields, announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype
of Osiris. Similar cries, as we have seen, were also heard on all
the harvest-fields of Western Asia. By the ancients they are
spoken of as songs; but to judge from the analysis of the names
Linus and Maneros, they probably consisted only of a few words
uttered in a prolonged musical note which could be heard at a
great distance. Such sonorous and long-drawn cries, raised by a
number of strong voices in concert, must have had a striking
effect, and could hardly fail to arrest the attention of any wayfarer
who happened to be within hearing. The sounds, repeated again
and again, could probably be distinguished with tolerable ease
even at a distance; but to a Greek traveller in Asia or Egypt the
foreign words would commonly convey no meaning, and he might
take them, not unnaturally, for the name of some one (Maneros,
Linus, Lityerses, Bormus) upon whom the reapers were calling.
And if his journey led him through more countries than one, as
Bithynia and Phrygia, or Phoenicia and Egypt, while the corn was
being reaped, he would have an opportunity of comparing the
various harvest cries of the different peoples. Thus we can readily
understand why these harvest cries were so often noted and
compared with each other by the Greeks. Whereas, if they had
been regular songs, they could not have been heard at such
distances, and therefore could not have attracted the attention of
so many travellers; and, moreover, even if the wayfarer were
within hearing of them, he could not so easily have picked out the
words. 11
Down to recent times Devonshire reapers uttered cries of the
same sort, and performed on the field a ceremony exactly
analogous to that in which, if I am not mistaken, the rites of Osiris
originated. The cry and the ceremony are thus described by an
observer 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 believe that
this practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in that part of the
country. It is done in this way. An old man, or some one else well
acquainted with the ceremonies used on the occasion (when the
labourers are reaping the last field of wheat), goes round to the
shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle of all the best
ears he can find; this bundle he ties up very neat and trim, and
plats and arranges the straws very tastefully. This is called `the
neck' of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the
pitcher once more circulated, the reapers, binders, and the
women stand round in a circle. The person with `the neck' stands
in the centre, grasping it with both hands. He first stoops and
holds it near the ground, and all the men forming the ring take off
their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the
ground. They then all begin at once in a very prolonged and
harmonious tone to cry `The neck!' at the same time slowly raising
themselves upright, and elevating their arms and hats above their
heads; the person with `the neck' also raising it on high. This is
done three times. They then change their cry to `Wee yen!'-`Way
yen!'-which they sound in the same prolonged and slow manner
as before, with singular harmony and effect, three times. This last
cry is accompanied by the same movements of the body and arms
as in crying `the neck.' ... After having thus repeated `the neck'
three times, and `wee yen,' or `way yen' as often, they all burst
out into a kind of loud and joyous laugh, flinging up their hats and
caps into the air, capering about and perhaps kissing the girls.
One of them then gets `the neck' and runs as hard as he can
down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid, or one of the young
female domestics, stands at the door prepared with a pail of water.
If he who holds `the neck' can manage to get into the house, in
any way unseen, or openly, by any other way than the door at
which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he may lawfully
kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused with the contents
of the bucket. On a fine still autumn evening the `crying of the
neck' has a wonderful effect at a distance, far finer than that of the
Turkish muezzin, which Lord Byron eulogises so much, and which
he says is preferable to all the bells of Christendom. I have once
or twice heard upwards of twenty men cry it, and sometimes joined
by an equal number of female voices. About three years back, on
some high grounds, where our people were harvesting, I heard six
or seven `necks' cried in one night, although I know that some of
them were four miles off. They are heard through the quiet evening
air at a considerable distance sometimes." Again, Mrs. Bray tells
how, travelling in Devonshire, "she saw a party of reapers
standing in a circle on a rising ground, holding their sickles aloft.
One in the middle held up some ears of corn tied together with
flowers, and the party shouted three times (what she writes as)
`Arnack, arnack, arnack, we haven, we haven, we haven.' They
went home, accompanied by women and children carrying
boughs of flowers, shouting and singing. The manservant who
attended Mrs. Bray said `it was only the people making their
games, as they always did, to the spirit of harvest.'" Here, as Miss
Burne remarks, "`arnack, we haven!' is obviously in the Devon
dialect, `a neck (or nack)! we have un!'" 12
Another account of this old custom, written at Truro in 1839, runs
thus: "Now, when all the corn was cut at Heligan, the farming men
and maidens come in front of the house, and bring with them a
small sheaf of corn, the last that has been cut, and this is adorned
with ribbons and flowers, and one part is tied quite tight, so as to
look like a neck. Then they cry out `Our (my) side, my side,' as
loud as they can; then the dairymaid gives the neck to the head
farming-man. He takes it, and says, very loudly three times, `I
have him, I have him, I have him.' Then another farming-man
shouts very loudly, `What have ye? what have ye? what have
ye?' Then the first says, `A neck, a neck, a neck.' And when he
has said this, all the people make a very great shouting. This they
do three times, and after one famous shout go away and eat
supper, and dance, and sing songs." According to another
account, "all went out to the field when the last corn was cut, the
`neck' was tied with ribbons and plaited, and they danced round
it, and carried it to the great kitchen, where by-and-by the
supper was. The words were as given in the previous account,
and `Hip, hip, hack, heck, I have 'ee, I have 'ee, I have `ee.' It
was hung up in the hall." Another account relates that one of the
men rushed from the field with the last sheaf, while the rest
pursued him with vessels of water, which they tried to throw over
the sheaf before it could be brought into the barn. 13
In the foregoing customs a particular bunch of ears, generally
the last left standing, is conceived as the neck of the corn-spirit,
who is consequently beheaded when the bunch is cut down.
Similarly in Shropshire the name "neck," or "the gander's neck,"
used to be commonly given to the last handful of ears left standing
in the middle of the field when all the rest of the corn was cut. It
was plaited together, and the reapers, standing ten or twenty
paces off, threw their sickles at it. Whoever cut it through was said
to have cut off the gander's neck. The "neck" was taken to the
farmer's wife, who was supposed to keep it in the house for good
luck till the next harvest came round. Near Trèves, the man who
reaps the last standing corn "cuts the goat's neck off." At Faslane,
on the Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last handful of standing
corn was sometimes called the "head." At Aurich, in East
Friesland, the man who reaps the last corn "cuts the hare's tail
off." In mowing down the last corner of a field French reapers
sometimes call out, "We have the cat by the tail." In Bresse
(Bourgogne) the last sheaf represented the fox. Beside it a score
of ears were left standing to form the tail, and each reaper, going
back some paces, threw his sickle at it. He who succeeded in
severing it "cut off the fox's tail," and a cry of "You cou cou!" was
raised in his honour. These examples leave no room to doubt the
meaning of the Devonshire and Cornish expression "the neck," as
applied to the last sheaf. The corn-spirit is conceived in human or
animal form, and the last standing corn is part of its body-its neck,
its head, or its tail. Sometimes, as we have seen, the last corn is
regarded as the navel-string. Lastly, the Devonshire custom of
drenching with water the person who brings in "the neck" is a
raincharm, such as we have had many examples of. Its parallel in
the mysteries of Osiris was the custom of pouring water on the
image of Osiris or on the person who represented him. 14