In
some parishes of Wermland (Sweden), when a stranger enters the
threshing-floor where the threshers are at work, they say that "they
will teach him the threshing-song." Then they put a flail round his
neck and a straw rope about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a
stranger woman enters the threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail
round her body and a wreath of corn-stalks round her neck, and call
out, "See the Corn-woman! See! that is how the Corn-maiden looks!"
Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts,
binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the
corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by
agricultural implements, and thrown into the water. These
coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter
is a genuine description of an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But
since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal
representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most
enacted only in mimicry, it is desirable to show that in rude
society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural
ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields.
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