Kitabı oku: «The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)», sayfa 17

Amongst a younger generation of scholars, Tiele is of opinion that Osiris is the sun, because “in the hymns, his accession to the throne of his father is compared to the rising of the sun, and it is even said of him in so many words: ‘He glitters on the horizon, he sends out rays of light from his double feather and inundates the world with it, as the sun from out the highest heaven.’ ”¹⁰¹⁸ By the same token Marie Antoinette must have been a goddess of the morning star, because Burke saw her at Versailles “just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, – glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.” If such comparisons prove anything, they prove that Osiris was not the sun. There are always two terms to a comparison; a thing cannot be compared to itself. But Tiele also appeals to the monuments. What is his evidence? Osiris is sometimes represented by a figure surmounted by “the so-called Tat pillar, entirely made up of a kind of superimposed capitals, one of which has a rude face scratched upon it.” Tiele is of opinion that this rude face is “intended, no doubt, to represent the shining sun.”¹⁰¹⁹ If every “rude face scratched” is to be taken as a symbol of the shining sun, sun-worship will be discovered in some unexpected places. But, on the whole, Tiele, like Jablonski, prudently keeps to the high ground of vague generalities, and the result of his occasional descents to the level of facts is not such as to encourage him to prolong his stay. “Were we to come down to details,” he says, “and to attend to slight variations, we should be lost in an ocean of symbolism and mysticism.”¹⁰²⁰ This is like De Quincey's attitude towards murder. “General principles I will suggest. But as to any particular case, once for all I will have nothing to do with it.” There is no having a man who takes such lofty ground.

Mr. Le Page Renouf also considers that Osiris is the sun,¹⁰²¹ and his position is still stronger than Tiele's. For whereas Tiele produces bad arguments for his view, Mr. Renouf produces none at all, and therefore cannot possibly be confuted.

The ground upon which some recent writers seem chiefly to rely for the identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his death fits better with the solar phenomena than with any other in nature. It may readily be admitted that the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun might very naturally be expressed by a myth of his death and resurrection; and writers who regard Osiris as the sun are careful to emphasise the fact that it is the diurnal, and not the annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to apply. Mr. Renouf expressly admits that the Egyptian sun cannot with any show of reason be described as dead in winter.¹⁰²² But if his daily death was the theme of the legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said to die daily, in what sense can he be said to be torn in pieces?¹⁰²³

In the course of our inquiry, it has, I trust, been made clear that there is another natural phenomenon to which the conception of death and resurrection is as applicable as to sunset and sunrise, and which, as a matter of fact has been so conceived and represented in folk-custom. This phenomenon is the annual growth and decay of vegetation. A strong reason for interpreting the death of Osiris as the decay of vegetation rather than as the sunset is to be found in the general (though not unanimous) voice of antiquity, which classed together the worship and myths of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, as religions of essentially the same type.¹⁰²⁴ The consensus of ancient opinion on this subject seems too great to be rejected as a mere fancy. So closely did the rites of Osiris resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some of the people of Byblus themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not Adonis whose death was mourned by them.¹⁰²⁵ Such a view could certainly not have been held if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost indistinguishable. Again, Herodotus found the similarity between the rites of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the latter could have arisen independently; they must, he thought, have been recently borrowed, with slight alterations, by the Greeks from the Egyptians.¹⁰²⁶ Again, Plutarch, a very intelligent student of comparative religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of Osiris to those of Dionysus.¹⁰²⁷ We cannot reject the evidence of such intelligent and trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of fact which fell under their own cognisance. Their explanations of the worships it is indeed possible to reject, for the meaning of religious cults is often open to question; but resemblances of ritual are matters of observation. Therefore, those who explain Osiris as the sun are driven to the alternative of either dismissing as mistaken the testimony of antiquity to the similarity of the rites of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting all these rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly faced and accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would be to affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the men who practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the latter would involve a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting of myth and ritual from which even Macrobius shrank.¹⁰²⁸ On the other hand, the view that the essence of all these rites was the mimic death and revival of vegetation, explains them separately and collectively in an easy and natural way, and harmonises with the general testimony borne by antiquity to their substantial similarity. The evidence for thus explaining Adonis, Attis, and Osiris has now been presented to the reader; it remains to do the same for Dionysus and Demeter.

§ 7. – Dionysus

The Greek god Dionysus or Bacchus¹⁰²⁹ is best known as the god of the vine, but he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to “Dionysus of the tree.”¹⁰³⁰ In Boeotia one of his titles was “Dionysus in the tree.”¹⁰³¹ His image was often merely an upright post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the nature of the deity.¹⁰³² On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush.¹⁰³³ He was the patron of cultivated trees;¹⁰³⁴ prayers were offered to him that he would make the trees grow;¹⁰³⁵ and he was especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the shape of a natural tree-stump, in their orchards.¹⁰³⁶ He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned;¹⁰³⁷ and he was himself spoken of as doing a husbandman's work.¹⁰³⁸ He was referred to as “well-fruited,” “he of the green fruit,” and “making the fruit to grow.”¹⁰³⁹ One of his titles was “teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms);¹⁰⁴⁰ and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaea.¹⁰⁴¹ Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree.¹⁰⁴² The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree “equally with the god,” so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies.¹⁰⁴³ In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers.¹⁰⁴⁴ Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy;¹⁰⁴⁵ at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called meilicha, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.¹⁰⁴⁶

Like the other gods of vegetation whom we have been considering, Dionysus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought to life again; and his sufferings, death, and resurrection were enacted in his sacred rites. The Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus, ran thus. He was said to have been the bastard son of Jupiter (Zeus), a Cretan king. Going abroad, Jupiter transferred the throne and sceptre to the child Dionysus, but, knowing that his wife Juno (Hera) cherished a jealous dislike of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to the care of guards upon whose fidelity he believed he could rely. Juno, however, bribed the guards, and amusing the child with toys and a cunningly-wrought looking-glass lured him into an ambush, where her satellites, the Titans, rushed upon him, cut him limb from limb, boiled his body with various herbs and ate it. But his sister Minerva, who had shared in the deed, kept his heart and gave it to Jupiter on his return, revealing to him the whole history of the crime. In his rage, Jupiter put the Titans to death by torture, and, to soothe his grief for the loss of his son, made an image in which he enclosed the child's heart, and then built a temple in his honour.¹⁰⁴⁷ In this version a Euhemeristic turn has been given to the myth by representing Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera) as a king and queen of Crete. The guards referred to are the mythical Curetes who danced a war-dance round the infant Dionysus as they are said to have done round the infant Zeus.¹⁰⁴⁸ Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus,¹⁰⁴⁹ as anemones from the blood of Adonis and violets from the blood of Attis. According to some, the severed limbs of Dionysus were pieced together, at the command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them on Parnassus.¹⁰⁵⁰ The grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue of Apollo.¹⁰⁵¹ Thus far the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is variously related. One version, which represented Dionysus as a son of Demeter, averred that his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and made him young again.¹⁰⁵² In others it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;¹⁰⁵³ or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded;¹⁰⁵⁴ or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele,¹⁰⁵⁵ who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby conceived him.¹⁰⁵⁶

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial¹⁰⁵⁷ festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were represented in every detail.¹⁰⁵⁸ Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,¹⁰⁵⁹ and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus.¹⁰⁶⁰

A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead.¹⁰⁶¹ The local Argive tradition was that he descended through the Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.¹⁰⁶² Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him.¹⁰⁶³ Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.¹⁰⁶⁴

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as “cow-born,” “bull,” “bull-shaped,” “bull-faced,” “bull-browed,” “bull-horned,” “horn-bearing,” “two-horned,” “horned.”¹⁰⁶⁵ He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.¹⁰⁶⁶ His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,¹⁰⁶⁷ or with bull horns;¹⁰⁶⁸ and he was painted with horns.¹⁰⁶⁹ Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.¹⁰⁷⁰ On one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.¹⁰⁷¹ At his festivals Dionysus was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's-foot. They sang, “Come here, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's-foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!”¹⁰⁷² According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans;¹⁰⁷³ and the Cretans, in representing the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.¹⁰⁷⁴ Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites.¹⁰⁷⁵ The practice of representing the god in bull form or with some of the features of a bull, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that it was in bull form that he had been torn in pieces – all these facts taken together leave no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was “Kid.”¹⁰⁷⁶ To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed him into a kid;¹⁰⁷⁷ and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.¹⁰⁷⁸ Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,¹⁰⁷⁹ they must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.

This custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more fully presently, belongs to a very early stage in human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connection with the anthropomorphic gods which have been developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus is an example of a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured the vine.¹⁰⁸⁰ Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character and had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the god himself, but as a sacrifice to him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the god is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat's blood;¹⁰⁸¹ and the bull-god Dionysus is called “eater of bulls.”¹⁰⁸² On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that wherever a god is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the god himself.¹⁰⁸³

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should appear in animal form. But the consideration of this point had better be deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to point out that in some places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the custom in Chios and Tenedos;¹⁰⁸⁴ and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted.¹⁰⁸⁵ At Orchomenus the human victim was taken from the women of a certain family, called the Oleiae. At the annual festival the priest of Dionysus pursued these women with a drawn sword, and if he overtook one of them he had a right to slay her. This right was exercised as late as Plutarch's time.¹⁰⁸⁶ As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him. It is possible, however, that a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed.¹⁰⁸⁷

§ 8. – Demeter and Proserpine

The Greek myth of Demeter and Proserpine is substantially identical with the Syrian myth of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian myth of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek myth, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess – Demeter – mourns the loss of a loved one – Proserpine – who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in summer¹⁰⁸⁸ to revive in spring. But in the Greek myth the loved and lost one is the daughter instead of the husband or lover of the goddess; and the mother as well as the daughter is a goddess of the corn.¹⁰⁸⁹ Thus, as modern scholars have recognised,¹⁰⁹⁰ Demeter and Proserpine are merely a mythical reduplication of the same natural phenomenon. Proserpine, so ran the Greek myth,¹⁰⁹¹ was gathering flowers when the earth gaped, and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss, carried her off on his golden car to be his bride in the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter's fate, she suffered not the seed to grow, but kept it hidden in the ground, so that the whole race of men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not sent and fetched Proserpine from the nether world. Finally it was agreed that Proserpine should spend a third, or according to others a half,¹⁰⁹² of each year with Pluto underground, but should come forth in spring to dwell with her mother and the gods in the upper world. Her annual death and resurrection, that is, her annual descent into the under world and her ascension from it, appear to have been represented in her rites.¹⁰⁹³

With regard to the name Demeter, it has been plausibly argued by Mannhardt¹⁰⁹⁴ that the first part of the word is derived from dēai, a Cretan word for “barley”;¹⁰⁹⁵ and that thus Demeter means the Barley-mother or the Corn-mother; for the root of the word appears to have been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches of the Aryans, and even of the Greeks themselves.¹⁰⁹⁶ As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter,¹⁰⁹⁷ it is not surprising that her name should be of Cretan origin. This explanation of the name Demeter is supported by a host of analogies which the diligence of Mannhardt has collected from modern European folk-lore, and of which the following are specimens. In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the wind sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants say, “There comes the Corn-mother,” or “The Corn-mother is running over the field,” or “The Corn-mother is going through the corn.”¹⁰⁹⁸ When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them.¹⁰⁹⁹ Or again she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. In Norway also the Pea-mother is said to sit among the peas.¹¹⁰⁰ Similar expressions are current among the Slavs. The Poles and Czechs warn children against the Corn-mother who sits in the corn. Or they call her the Old Corn-woman, and say that she sits in the corn and strangles the children who tread it down.¹¹⁰¹ The Lithuanians say, “The Old Rye-woman sits in the corn.”¹¹⁰² Again the Corn-mother is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said, “It will be a good year for flax; the Flax-mother has been seen.” At Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria) down to fifteen or twenty years ago, people believed that when the crops on a particular farm compared unfavourably with those of the neighbourhood, the reason was that the Corn-mother had punished the farmer for his sins.¹¹⁰³ In a village of Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn-fields, which she fertilises by passing through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn.¹¹⁰⁴

Further, the Corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs. She is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left standing last on the field; and with the cutting of this last handful she is caught, or driven away, or killed. In the first of these cases, the last sheaf is carried joyfully home and honoured as a divine being. It is placed in the barn, and at threshing the corn-spirit appears again.¹¹⁰⁵ In the district of Hadeln (Hanover) the reapers stand round the last sheaf and beat it with sticks in order to drive the Corn-mother out of it. They call to each other, “There she is! hit her! Take care she doesn't catch you!” The beating goes on till the grain is completely threshed out; then the Corn-mother is believed to be driven away.¹¹⁰⁶ In the neighbourhood of Danzig the person who cuts the last ears of corn makes them into a doll, which is called the Corn-mother or the Old Woman, and is brought home on the last waggon.¹¹⁰⁷ In some parts of Holstein the last sheaf is dressed in woman's clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home on the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The drenching with water is doubtless a rain-charm.¹¹⁰⁸ In the district of Bruck in Styria the last sheaf, called the Corn-mother, is made up into the shape of a woman by the oldest married woman in the village, of an age from fifty to fifty-five years. The finest ears are plucked out of it and made into a wreath, which, twined with flowers, is carried on her head by the prettiest girl of the village to the farmer or squire, while the Corn-mother is laid down in the barn to keep off the mice.¹¹⁰⁹ In other villages of the same district the Corn-mother, at the close of harvest, is carried by two lads at the top of a pole. They march behind the girl who wears the wreath to the squire's house, and while he receives the wreath and hangs it up in the hall, the Corn-mother is placed on the top of a pile of wood, where she is the centre of the harvest supper and dance. Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the threshing is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the son of the Corn-mother; he is tied up in the Corn-mother, beaten, and carried through the village. The wreath is dedicated in church on the following Sunday; and on Easter Eve the grain is rubbed out of it by a seven years' old girl and scattered amongst the young corn. At Christmas the straw of the wreath is placed in the manger to make the cattle thrive.¹¹¹⁰ Here the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is plainly brought out by scattering the seed taken from her body (for the wreath is made out of the Corn-mother) among the new corn; and her influence over animal life is indicated by placing the straw in the manger. At Westerhüsen in Saxony the last corn cut is made in the shape of a woman decked with ribbons and cloth. It is fastened on a pole and brought home on the last waggon. One of the people on the waggon keeps waving the pole, so that the figure moves as if alive. It is placed on the threshing-floor, and stays there till the threshing is done.¹¹¹¹ Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is known as the Rye-mother, the Wheat-mother, the Oats-mother, the Barley-mother, etc., according to the crop. In the district of Tarnow, Galicia, the wreath made out of the last stalks is called the Wheat-mother, Rye-mother, or Pea-mother. It is placed on a girl's head and kept till spring, when some of the grain is mixed with the seed-corn.¹¹¹² Here again the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is indicated. In France, also, in the neighbourhood of Auxerre, the last sheaf goes by the name of the Mother of the Wheat, Mother of the Barley, Mother of the Rye, or Mother of the Oats. It is left standing in the field till the last waggon is about to wend homewards. Then a puppet is made out of it, dressed with clothes belonging to the farmer, and adorned with a crown and a blue or white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast of the puppet, which is now called the Ceres. At the dance in the evening the Ceres is placed in the middle of the floor, and the reaper who reaped fastest dances round it with the prettiest girl for his partner. After the dance a pyre is made. All the girls, each wearing a wreath, strip the puppet, pull it to pieces, and place it on the pyre, along with the flowers with which it was adorned. Then the girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and all pray that Ceres may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt observes, the old custom has remained intact, though the name Ceres is a bit of schoolmaster's learning.¹¹¹³ In Upper Britanny the last sheaf is always made into human shape; but if the farmer is a married man, it is made double and consists of a little corn-puppet placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf. It is delivered to the farmer's wife, who unties it and gives drink-money in return.¹¹¹⁴

Sometimes the last sheaf is called, not the Corn-mother, but the Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrück (Hanover) it is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female form, and then the reapers dance about with it. In some parts of Westphalia the last sheaf at the rye harvest is made especially heavy by fastening stones in it. It is brought home on the last waggon and is called the Great Mother, though no special shape is given it. In the district of Erfurt a very heavy sheaf (not necessarily the last) is called the Great Mother, and is carried on the last waggon to the barn, where it is lifted down by all hands amid a fire of jokes.¹¹¹⁵

Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is adorned with flowers, ribbons, and a woman's apron. In East Prussia, at the rye or wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “You are getting the Old Grandmother.” In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg the men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf, called the Grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year, but his or her spouse will be old; if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a man gets it, he will marry an old crone. In Silesia the Grandmother – a huge bundle made up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last sheaf – was formerly fashioned into a rude likeness of the human form.¹¹¹⁶ In the neighbourhood of Belfast the last sheaf is sometimes called Granny. It is not cut in the usual way, but all the reapers throw their sickles at it and try to bring it down. It is plaited and kept till the (next?) autumn. Whoever gets it will marry in the course of the year.¹¹¹⁷

Oftener the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man. In Germany it is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and the person who cuts it or binds it is said to “get the Old Woman.”¹¹¹⁸ At Altisheim in Swabia when all the corn of a farm has been cut except a single strip, all the reapers stand in a row before the strip; each cuts his share rapidly, and he who gives the last cut “has the Old Woman.”¹¹¹⁹ When the sheaves are being set up in heaps, the person who gets hold of the Old Woman, which is the largest and thickest of all the sheaves, is jeered at by the rest, who sing out to him, “He has the Old Woman and must keep her.”¹¹²⁰ The woman who binds the last sheaf is sometimes herself called the Old Woman, and it is said that she will be married in the next year.¹¹²¹ In Neusaass, West Prussia, both the last sheaf – which is dressed up in jacket, hat and ribbons – and the woman who binds it are called the Old Woman. Together they are brought home on the last waggon and are drenched with water.¹¹²² At Hornkampe, near Tiegenhof (West Prussia), when a man or woman lags behind the rest in binding the corn, the other reapers dress up the last sheaf in the form of a man or woman, and this figure goes by the laggard's name, as “the old Michael,” “the idle Trine.” It is brought home on the last waggon, and, as it nears the house, the bystanders call out to the laggard, “You have got the Old Woman and must keep her.”¹¹²³