The Golden Bough, Volume 1 — книга для чтения (C2)

To the question, how was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to one version of the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not passing strangers but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest; and though it is not said that he killed, but only that he thrashed them, we can hardly avoid supposing that in one version of the story the vanquished reapers, like the strangers in the other version, were said to have been wrapt up by Lityerses in corn-sheaves and so beheaded. The [pg 394] supposition is countenanced by European harvest-customs. We have seen that in Europe there is sometimes a contest amongst the reapers to avoid being last, and that the person who is vanquished in this competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often roughly handled.