Chapter 31 Lytyrsis: Song of the Grain Reapers

It has been attempted to show that the Nordic grain mothers and harvest daughters are the prototypes of Demeter and Persephone.But one major feature is missing to make this comparison complete.There is one central situation in this Greek myth, the death and resurrection of Persephone; it is this situation and the nature of the goddess as a vegetable god that makes this myth so incompatible with Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Dio. The cult of Nissos, etc.; it is because of this circumstance that this myth has a place in our discussion of the god of death.So we also need to see whether the belief in the annual death and resurrection of a god who was so prominent among the important gods worshiped in Greece and the Orient arose from or was similar to the reapers and vine weavers at the heap and rural ceremonies in the vineyards.

We have confessed that we are generally ignorant of the superstitions and customs of the old folk.On the above-mentioned question, however, the mist of the first religions of antiquity has fortunately dissipated to some extent.We have said that the worship of Osiris, Adonis, and Attis had its place in Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia; and we know that each of these countries observes a certain custom of harvesting corn or grapes. The resemblance of these customs to one another and to state ceremonies astonished the ancients themselves, and a comparison of these customs with the harvest customs of modern peasant or savage peoples seems to shed some light on the origin of the ceremonies in question.

We have already mentioned, from the sources of Diodorus, that the reapers of ancient Egypt often mourned the first sheaf of corn they cut, and called up Isis, who found it for them, as a goddess.The Greeks named the lament or wail of the Egyptian reapers Maniros, and explained the name with a story.Manaros, the only son of the first king of Egypt, who invented agriculture, died prematurely, so people mourned him.Still, the name Maniros appears to be a misinterpretation of the idiom maa-ne-hra ("come home!").This idiom is found in various Egyptian writings, for example in the Book of the Dead, in the Elegy of Isis.We may therefore assume that the "Ma-ne-hera" howl was sung by the reapers over the cut corn, as a dirge for the corn-spirit (Isis or Osiris) and to implore him to return .Since there was a wail when the first corn was cut, the Egyptians must have thought that the corn-spirit was in the first corn and died by the scythe.We talked about how people in Peninsular Malay and Java consider the first handful of paddy to be the soul of the paddy or the paddy bride and paddy groom.In some parts of Russia the first handful of corn is treated almost the same as the last handful of corn in other places.The hostess herself cuts the handful of corn, takes it home, and places it in a place of reverence beside the icon; it is then threshed separately, and some of the grain is mixed with the next year's seed.In Aberdeenshire a creak sheaf is usually made from the last handful, and occasionally the first to be cut, and is ceremonially carried home in the dress of a woman.