The Lappish field has proved the most successful hunting ground[[548]]: among the Finns, apart from the Thunder-god, connection with Norse beliefs is arguable mainly for a group of gods of fruitfulness[[549]]. The cult of these, it is suggested, comes from scattered Scandinavian settlers in Finland, among whom the Finns dwelt, and from whom they learnt the worship of the spirits of the seed and of the spring, just as they learnt more practical lessons. First and foremost among these stands Pekko, whom we know to have been especially the god of barley, and whose connection with Beow or Byggvir (*Beggwuz) is therefore a likely hypothesis enough[[550]]. Much less certain is the connection of Sämpsä, the spirit of vegetation, with any Germanic prototype; he may have been a god of the rush-grass[[551]] (Germ. simse). Runkoteivas or Rukotivo was certainly the god of rye, and the temptation to derive his name from Old Norse (rugr-tivorr, "rye-god") is great[[552]]. But we have not evidence for
the worship among Germanic peoples of such a rye-god, as we have in the case of the barley-god Byggvir-Beow. These shadowy heathen gods, however, do give each other a certain measure of mutual support.
And, whether or no Pekko be the same as Byggvir, his worship is interesting as showing how the spirit of vegetation may be honoured among primitive folk. His worshippers, the Setukese, although nominally members of the Greek Orthodox Church, speak their own dialect and often hardly understand that of their Russian priests, but keep their old epic and lyric traditions more than almost any other section of the Finnish-Esthonian race. Pekko, who was honoured among the Finns in the sixteenth century for "promoting the growth of barley," survives among the present-day peasantry around Pskoff, not only as a spirit to be worshipped, but as an actual idol, fashioned out of wax in the form of a child, sometimes of a three year old child. He lives in the corn-bin, but on certain occasions is carried out into the fields. Not everyone can afford the amount of wax necessary for a Pekko—in fact there is usually only one in a village: he lodges in turn with different members of his circle of worshippers. He holds two moveable feasts, on moonlight nights—one in spring, the other in autumn. The wax figure is brought into a lighted room draped in a sheet, there is feasting, with dancing hand in hand, and singing round Pekko. Then they go out to decide who shall keep Pekko for the next year—his host is entitled to special blessing and protection. Pekko is carried out into the field, especially to preside over the sowing[[553]].
I doubt whether, in spite of the high authorities which support it, we can as yet feel at all certain about the identification of Beow and Pekko. But I think we can accept with fair certainty the identification of Beow and Byggvir. And we can at any rate use Pekko as a collateral example of the way in which a grain-spirit is regarded. Now in either case we find no support whatever for the supposition that the activities of
Beow, the spirit of the barley, could, or would, have been typified under the guise of battles such as those which Beowulf the Geat wages against Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. In Beowulf the Geat we find much that suggests the hero of folk-tale, overlaid with much that belongs to him as the hero of an heroic poem, but nothing suggestive of a corn-myth. On the other hand, so long as we confine ourselves to Beow and his ancestor Sceaf, we are in touch with this type of myth, however remotely. The way that Sceaf comes over the sea, as recorded by William of Malmesbury, is characteristic. That "Sheaf" should be, in the language of Müllenhoff, "placed in a boat and committed to the winds and waves in the hope that he will return new-born in the spring" is exactly what we might expect, from the analogy of harvest customs and myths of the coming of spring.
In Sætersdale, in Norway, when the ice broke up in the spring, and was driven ashore, the inhabitants used to welcome it by throwing their hats into the air, and shouting "Welcome, Corn-boat." It was a good omen if the "Corn-boats" were driven high and dry up on the land[[554]]. The floating of the sheaf on a shield down the Thames at Abingdon[[555]] reminds us of the Bulgarian custom, in accordance with which the venerated last sheaf of the harvest was floated down the river[[556]]. But every neighbourhood is not provided with convenient rivers, and in many places the last sheaf is merely drenched with water. This is an essential part of the custom of "crying the neck."
The precise ritual of "crying the neck" or "crying the mare" was confined to the west and south-west of England[[557]]. But there is no such local limitation about the custom of drenching the
last sheaf, or its bearers and escort, with water. This has been recorded, among other places, at Hitchin in Hertfordshire[[558]], in Cambridgeshire[[559]], Nottinghamshire[[560]], Pembrokeshire[[561]], Wigtownshire[[562]] as well as in Holstein[[563]], Westphalia[[564]], Prussia[[565]], Galicia[[566]], Saxon Transsylvania[[567]], Roumania[[568]] and perhaps in ancient Phrygia[[569]].
Now it is true that drenching the last sheaf with water, as a rain charm, is by no means the same thing as floating it down the river, in the expectation that it will come again in the spring. But it shows the same sense of the continued existence of the corn-spirit. That the seed, when sown, should be sprinkled with water as a rain charm (as is done in places) seems obvious and natural enough. But when the last sheaf of the preceding harvest is thus sprinkled, to ensure plenteous rain upon the crops of next year, we detect the same idea of continuity which we find expressed when Sceaf comes to land from over the sea: the spirit embodied in the sheaf of last year's harvest returning, and bringing the renewed power of vegetation.
The voyage of the Abingdonian sheaf on the Thames was conducted upon a shield, and it may be that the "vessel without a rower" in which "Sheaf" came to land was, in the original version, a shield. There would be precedent for this. The shield was known by the puzzling name of "Ull's ship" in Scaldic poetry, presumably because the god Ull used his shield as a boat. Anyway, Scyld came to be closely connected with Sceaf and Beow. In Ethelwerd he is son of the former and father of the latter: but in the Chronicle genealogies five names intervene between Scyld and Sceaf, and the son of Sceaf is Bedwig, or as he is called in one version, Beowi. Bedwig and Beowi are probably derived from Beowius, the Latinized