when the patriarch was about to slay and burn his son, but found a substitute in the ram caught in a thicket by his horns.
Until his death, in 1884, William Pengelly, aged seventy-eight, was wont annually, at harvest thanksgivings, to bring a Cornman to the church, to be set up there as a decoration. It consisted of a small sheaf of wheat with the heads tied tightly together, and wreathed with flowers, and below, by means of a stick thrust through, two arms were found, and five stalks of barley were bound about each protruding portion of the stick, with the heads standing out to represent fingers. Before harvest thanksgivings were instituted, the Comman was taken to the barn and there suspended.
It was not invariable that the arms should be formed, and I have seen the Cornman without them, or with only indications of arms. As such, if I do not mistake, he is represented as many as eight times on the carved oak benches of Altarnon Church in Cornwall.
Mr. Hunt, in his Romances and Drolls of the West of England, thus describes what used to be called ‘Crying a neck’ at harvest.
‘After the wheat is all cut on most farms in Cornwall and Devon, the harvest people
