Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/391

III the person who gives the last stroke is said to have the Old Man.

These examples illustrate the contests in reaping, threshing, and binding which take place amongst the harvesters, on account of their unwillingness to suffer the ridicule and personal inconvenience attaching to the individual who happens to finish his work last. It will be remembered that the person who is last at reaping, binding, or threshing, is regarded as the representative of the corn-spirit, and this idea is more fully expressed by binding him or her in corn-stalks. The latter custom has been already illustrated, but a few more instances may be added. At Kloxin, near Stettin, the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “You have the Old Man, and must keep him.” The Old Man is a great bundle of corn decked with flowers and ribbons, and fashioned into a rude semblance of the human form. It is fastened on a rake or strapped on a horse, and brought with music to the village. In delivering the Old Man to the farmer, the woman says—

Forty or fifty years ago the custom was to tie up the woman herself in pease-straw, and bring her with music to the farmhouse, where the harvesters danced with her till the pease-straw fell off In other villages round Stettin, when the last harvest-waggon is being loaded, there is a regular race amongst the women,

VOL. I