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.
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.
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