they pay a forfeit; and when the farmer himself or one of his guests enters the field or the threshing-floor for the first time, he is treated in the same way. Sometimes the rope is only tied round his arm or his feet or his neck.[1] But sometimes he is regularly swathed in corn. Thus at Solör in Norway, whoever enters the field, be he the master or a stranger, is tied up in a sheaf and must pay a ransom. In the neighbourhood of Soest, when the farmer visits the flax-pullers for the first time, he is completely enveloped in flax. Passers-by are also surrounded by the women, tied up in flax, and compelled to stand brandy.[2] At Nördlingen strangers are caught with straw ropes and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. At Brie, Isle de France, when any one who does not belong to the farm passes by the harvest-field, the reapers give chase. If they catch him, they bind him in a sheaf and bite him, one after the other, in the forehead, crying “You shall carry the key of the field.”[3] “To have the key” is an expression used by harvesters elsewhere in the sense of to cut or bind or thresh the last sheaf;[4] hence, it is equivalent to the phrases “You have the Old Man,” “You are the
- ↑ W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 32 sqq. Cp. Revue des Traditions populaires, iii. 598.
- ↑ W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch. p. 35 sq.
- ↑ Ib. p. 36.
- ↑ For the evidence, see ib. p. 36, note 2. The idea which lies at the bottom of the phrase seems to be explained by the following Cingalese custom. “There is a curious custom of the threshing-floor called ‘Goigote”—the tying of the cultivator’s knot. When a sheaf of corn has been threshed out, before it is removed the grain is heaped up and the threshers, generally six in number, sit round it, and taking a few stalks, with the ears of corn attached, jointly tie a knot and bury it in the heap. It is left there until all the sheaves have been threshed and the corn winnowed and measured. The object of this ceremony is to prevent the devils from diminishing the quantity of corn in the heap.” C. J. R. Le Mesurier, “Customs and Superstitions connected with the Cultivation of Rice in the Southern Province of Ceylon,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., xvii. (1885) 371. The “key” in the European custom is probably intended to serve the same purpose as the “knot” in the Cingalese custom.
