On the Welsh border the essence of the ceremony consisted in tying the last ears of corn—perhaps twenty—with ribbon, and severing this "neck" by throwing the sickle at it from some distance. The custom is recorded in Cheshire[[178]], Shropshire[[179]], and under a different name in Herefordshire[[180]]. The term "neck" seems to have been known as far afield as Yorkshire and the "little England beyond Wales"—the English-speaking colony of Pembrokeshire[[181]].
Whether we are to interpret the expression "the Neck," applied to the last sheaf, as descended from a time when "the corn spirit is conceived in human form, and the last standing corn is a part of its body—its neck[[182]] ..." or whether it is merely a survival of the Scandinavian word for sheaf—nek or neg[[183]], we have here surely evidence of the worship of the sheaf. "In this way 'Sheaf' was greeted, before he passed over into a purely mythical being[[184]]."
I do not think these "neck" customs can be traced back beyond the seventeenth century[[185]]. Though analogous usages are recorded in England (near Eton) as early as the sixteenth century[[186]], it was not usual at that time to trouble to record such things.
The earliest document bearing upon the veneration of the sheaf comes from a neighbouring district, and is contained in the Chronicle of the Monastery of Abingdon, which tells how in the time of King Edmund (941-946) a controversy arose as to the right of the monks of Abingdon to a certain portion of land adjoining the river. The monks appealed to a judgment of God to vindicate their claim, and this took the shape of
placing a sheaf, with a taper on the top, upon a round shield and letting it float down the river, the shield by its movements hither and thither indicating accurately the boundaries of the monastic domain. At last the shield came to the field in debate, which, thanks to the floods, it was able to circumnavigate[[187]].
Professor Chadwick, who first emphasized the importance of this strange ordeal[[188]], points out that although the extant MSS of the Chronicle date from the thirteenth century, the mention of a round shield carries the superstition back to a period before the Norman Conquest. Therefore this story seems to give us evidence for the use of the sheaf and shield together as a magic symbol in Anglo-Saxon times. "An ordeal by letting the sheaf sail down the river on a shield was only possible at a time when the sheaf was regarded as a kind of supernatural being which could find the way itself[[189]]."
But a still closer parallel to the story of the corn-figure coming over the water is found in Finnish mythology in the person of Sämpsä Pellervoinen. Finnish mythology seems remote from our subject, but if the figure of Sämpsä was borrowed from Germanic mythology, as seems to be thought[[190]], we are justified in laying great weight upon the parallel.
Readers of the Kalewala will remember, near the beginning, the figure of Sämpsä Pellervoinen, the god of Vegetation. He does not seem to do much. But there are other Finnish
poems in his honour, extant in varying versions[[191]]. It is difficult to get a collected idea from these fragmentary records, but it seems to be this: Ahti, the god of the sea, sends messengers to summon Sämpsä, so that he may bring fertility to the fields. In one version, first the Winter and then the Summer are sent to arouse Sämpsä, that he may make the crops and trees grow. Winter—
Took a foal swift as the spring wind,