to trace back to a time when he was actually drowned. These Bavarian examples concern spring customs, but harvest customs resemble them closely. In some parts of Europe the corn spirit is regarded as female, and is spoken of as the corn mother; and in such cases it is a woman who makes up the figure out of corn straw, or else is wrapped up in straw and led about processionally. The cutting of the last shock is supposed to be the killing of the corn spirit. Sometimes, and that not infrequently, a youth or a woman is wrapped up in the straw and treated very roughly—only now not slain. In a good many cases the corn man or woman was not drowned but burnt.
Owing to the distress caused in a small community by the sacrifice by water or fire of one of its members, it became customary to seize on a stranger passing by, or entering the cornfield. He was constrained to ransom himself by a payment. Thus, in Essex, if one not a reaper ventures into a cornfield, the workmen rush upon him, surround him, shouting, ‘A largess! A largess!’ and beat him very unhandsomely unless he pays to escape.
In Phrygia we are told that Lityertes, son of King Midas, used to reap the corn; but when a stranger chanced to enter the field
