At N?rdlingen strangers are caught with
straw ropes and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. Among
the Germans of Haselberg, in West Bohemia, as soon as a farmer had
given the last corn to be threshed on the threshing-floor, he was
swathed in it and had to redeem himself by a present of cakes. In
the canton of Putanges, in Normandy, a pretence of tying up the
owner of the land in the last sheaf of wheat is still practised, or
at least was still practised some quarter of a century ago. The task
falls to the women alone. They throw themselves on the proprietor,
seize him by the arms, the legs, and the body, throw him to the
ground, and stretch him on the last sheaf. Then a show is made of
binding him, and the conditions to be observed at the harvest-supper
are dictated to him. When he has accepted them, he is released and
allowed to get up. At Brie, Isle de France, when any one who does
not belong to the farm passes by the harvest-field, the reapers give
chase. If they catch him, they bind him in a sheaf an dbite him, one
after the other, in the forehead, crying, "You shall carry the key
of the field.
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