Further, there is evidence which goes to show
that among the agricultural peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean,
the corn-spirit, by whatever name he was known, was often
represented, year by year, by human victims slain on the
harvest-field. If that was so, it seems likely that the propitiation
of the corn-spirit would tend to fuse to some extent with the
worship of the dead. For the spirits of these victims might be
thought to return to life in the ears which they had fattened with
their blood, and to die a second death at the reaping of the corn.
Now the ghosts of those who have perished by violence are surly and
apt to wreak their vengeance on their slayers whenever an
opportunity offers. Hence the attempt to appease the souls of the
slaughtered victims would naturally blend, at least in the popular
conception, with the attempt to pacify the slain corn-spirit. And as
the dead came back in the sprouting corn, so they might be thought
to return in the spring flowers, waked from their long sleep by the
soft vernal airs. They had been laid to their rest under the sod.
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