As part of new research into our farming collections, Julia Webb-Harvey returns to investigate Cornish farming customs.

In the museum we have a handful of objects relating to harvest within the farming collection. There are two intricate corn dollies, a ‘Cornucopia’ (horn of plenty) and a Harvest Cross, made and donated by Mrs Bucknall. 

We also have a corn dolly, a long neck of corn bound with string, from the custom of ‘crying the neck’ (donated by Mr K. Skeggs). 

When we talk about ‘corn’ we mean cereals like wheat, barley and rye and not sweetcorn.

The display is supplemented by two photographs of the crying the neck ceremony – one of Lonon Farm, Stithney from 1966 and the other Milliwarm Farm, Cury from 1967. There are other photographs of the crying the neck ceremony involving the Old Cornwall Society and Gorsedh Kernow in the museum’s collection dating to the 1960s. 

Ancient practices and modern dollies

But what is the significance of the corn customs to Cornish life? In some respects, the corn dollies are easier to deal with, because no one has claimed them as a particularly Cornish tradition. 

In the museum’s reference library, there is a delightful little book, Discovering Corn Dollies by M. Lambeth. It examines the legends and traditions associated with the corn dolly before turning to the to the practice of braiding the corn – the many techniques and forms.

The origin story of the Corn Dolly is thought to begin much further east than Cornwall, Britain even, although no one knows for certain from where or when. It lies in the territory somewhere between tradition and legend.

Lambeth tracks the origin story to Egypt, India, and Greece. It is from Greece, supposedly, that the shape of the ‘cornuncopia’ comes–and here it is tied to a myth. The ram’s horn was a creation of Zeus as a symbol of gratitude to the nymphs that raised him. Zeus fashioned the horn and filled it with the best seeds and a promise that the contents would supply all the food they needed. 

Barnett provides scholarly evidence of corn dollies as hieroglyphic carvings found in Egypt, where “they appear in the tomb frescoes of the XVIIIth Dynasty. In the Tomb of Nakht at Thebes25 which show contemporary scenes of harvest,” (1989: 5). He also gives examples from Syria and Palestine, and Cyprus.

Both Lambeth and Barnett acknowledge that these traditions are those forged before anyone noted it down. Instead, the customs and rituals were handed down through the generations. Barnett suggests that they were traditions of the people, and not tied to practices by Priestesses or deities, and that’s why they have survived.

Corn dollies have a fascinating trace that we can make across time and geography, but as Barnett remarks – with whom and why the practice travelled is always likely to remain a mystery. 

Awakening the seed from the last handful of corn

A significant part of the corn dolly story is that it is usually made from the last handful of corn cut at harvest-time. This magical handful is fashioned into its dolly form in order to capture the corn-spirit. The corn dolly is brought in doors over the winter and, when the seeds are sown the following year, it will be taken out so that the spirit could transfer to the sown seed and awaken it.

It’s natural to think of these as harvest traditions – and they are at one level. The context of harvest celebrations within the Church of England is not an ancient tradition, and was introduced centuries after the traditions of the corn dollies. This is important context in the the ritual of cutting the last sheaf of corn. 

What is harvest, and what has it become today?

Reverend Hawker’s harvest time

According to a Campaign for Rural England (CPRE) publication, the word ‘harvest’ derives from an Anglo-Saxon word for autumn, haerfest, however the harvest festival celebrations within the Church of England tradition are not that old. 

Harvest festival was the creation of Reverend Robert Hawker in 1843 for his parishioners in Morwenstow, north Cornwall. Morwenstow lies on a run of high cliffs that faces down the Atlantic, a striking location and brutal for ships trying to outrun a storm. 

When Hawker arrived in the parish in 1834, he had his work cut out to him in taming his unruly flock. The church was a poor state of repair, used for storing spoils of wreck and sheep when the weather was bad. 

Hawker became obsessed with saving the souls of those who drowned in shipwreck. Hawker is credited with gradually converting his parishioners from a community of wreckers to rescuers, initially by offering them ‘coin’ to assist in the recovery of bodies. It is uncertain why Hawker introduced the harvest festival, perhaps to bring together his community even more, but it is something that has remained within the Christian practices of the Church of England ever since.

Crying the neck and the Cornish revival

Crying the Neck has leanings towards the harvest festival these days, but its practice is a result of a revivalist movement of the Old Cornwall Society (OCS) in the 1920s to reclaim old Cornish traditions that were on the wane. 

The photographic records that we have in the museum of Crying the Neck were all taken after this revival in the 1960s, and all of them showing OCS events. Now, Crying the Neck is heralded as a Cornish tradition, and one that still takes place across various locations in Cornwall. Indeed, it is an event in the OCS calendar, where local branches invite farms local to them to host the celebration. 

It was adopted as part of a revival of Cornish traditions, but how Cornish is it? 

I decided to take a look through the historiography of Cornwall and see where the trail leads back to. It is a muddled picture, and one that makes more sense when told chronologically. There are references to the same stories – but not always consistently narrated. This chimes with an observation by the Cornish scholar Bernard Deacon, who writes (of Cornwall) “there’s our history. Not the past, which doesn’t change. But the stories told about that past, which do.”

The earliest narrative history of Cornwall dates back to the 17^th century and Carew’s Cornwall. It’s heavy going, and bears no reference to any customs of corn. 

There is a letter from Mrs Bray, written in 1836, that many subsequent writers refer to – and not always consistently. The letter is to Robert Southney, and is about the Crying the Neck. It is one of the oldest narratives – but it also relates to Mrs Bray’s observation whilst in Devon. She writes:

“One evening, about the end of harvest, I was riding out on my pony, attended by a servant who was born and bred a Devonian. We were passing near a field on the borders of Dartmoor, where the reapers were assembled. In a moment the pony started nearly from one side of the way to the other, so sudden came a shout from the field, which gave him this alarm. On my stopping to ask my servant what all that noise was about, he seemed surprised by the question, and said “It was only the people making their games as they always did, to the spirit of the harvest.” Such a reply was quite sufficient to [in]duce me to stop immediately; as I felt certain here was to be observed some curious vestige of a most ancient superstition; and I soon gained all the information I could wish to obtain upon the subject. The offering to the spirit of the harvest is thus made.

When the reaping is finished, toward evening the labourers select some of the best ears of corn from the sheaves; these they tie together, and it is called the nack. Sometimes, as it was when I witnessed the custom, this nack is decorated with flowers, twisted in with the reed, which gives it a gay and fantastic appearance. The reapers then proceed to a high place (such, in fact, was the field on the side of a steep hill where I saw them) and there they go, to use their own words, to “holla the nack.” The man who bears this offering stands in the midst, elevates it, whilst all the other labourers form them selves into a circle about him; each holds aloft his hook, and in a moment they all shout, as loud as they possibly can, these words, which I spell as I heard them pronounced, and I presume they are not to be found in any written record. “Arnack, arnack, arnack, wehaven ,wehaven ,wehaven? — This is repeated three several times; and the firkin is handed round between each shout, by way, I conclude, of libation. When the weather is fine, different parties of reapers, each stationed on some height, may be heard for miles round, shouting, as it were, in answer to each other.”

This account is interesting in that it has the elements of the ‘ceremony’ that takes place within the OCS calendar, but it is clear from Mrs Bray’s account that it was a practice that took place by the reapers in the field as a celebration of the end of hard work. There was no vicar, no hymns and no real fuss. 

In the name of God, let’s begin

In looking at William Bottrell’s, Stories and Folklore of West Cornwall (1880) I could not find any account of Crying the Neck. Bottrell was a local man of West Penwith, who was a fastidious recorder, and said to be a reliable witness. His accounts of West Cornwall are detailed, precise and engaging. 

Whilst Crying the Neck does not appear, in a section on ‘Cornish observations with regard to the sun and moon,’ Bottrell observes the following:

“On entering the field, the cattle, attached to the plough, were turned towards the west, and the ploughman saying, “in the name of God, let’s begin,” and proceed with the course of the sun to break the ground of a few yards of sod, thereafter anyway.” 

Bottrell also said that this would be the same for the sowing of the seed, for a few handfuls of grain, cast around, from east to west, for luck. Interestingly, Bottrell also wrote that for the midsummer bonfires, people would also leap east to west. The midsummer bonfire was another custom also revived by OCS in the 1920s.

In 1886, M. A. Courtney (Miss Courtney as she was often referred to) published an article on ‘Cornish Feast and “Feasten” Customs’ in The Folk-Lore Journal. Her account follows the months of the year, and when it comes to the customs associated with cutting the last sheaf of corn, the neck at harvest-time, she says that in the west, the cutting is always by the oldest reaper – with the cries as recorded by Bray. 

The neck is then made into miniature sheaf with flowers and ribbons and tied to a beam in the kitchen until the next harvest. Courtney reports an account made by Robert Hunt of more high-spirited hijinks where one of the reapers seizes the sheaf and runs hard to try and get into the house unseen or face being doused with a pail of water by a maid – if he succeeds in getting into the house, he earns a kiss as his prize. 

Courtney describes the barley-harvest as a ‘crow’ (where corn has the ‘neck’). She reports that East Cornwall has a variation on the traditions of West Cornwall, where the neck is carried to a mowhay (enclosure) before being cried – and that it is hung until Christmas when it is then fed to the best ox in the stalls. 

The straw man – an unreliable witness

In an extraordinary account published in 1899 in the Cornish Magazine, Baring Gould devotes a whole article to the practice of Crying the Neck. He begins it with a story of the north Devon MP stumbling upon the rituals of Crying the Neck – which he said was the same in Devon and Cornwall, noting that it is rarely practised since the invention of thrashing machines. 

Baring Gould claims it to be some forty or fifty years (so the mid-1850s) since it was regularly performed. He then goes to quote, in full, Mrs Bray’s account (as detailed above) and migrates the story to his old coachman, who taking in the neck would weave it into a corn dolly to be hung in the church at harvest time. He goes on to acknowledge that it isn’t particularly Cornish but reaches out to practices in Northern England and Essex.

In an even more extraordinary leap, Baring Gould takes the idea of the straw man and links it to Guy Fawkes – he says the harvest tradition is done up to November. This morphs into a description of the May Queen, as a virgin who would be celebrated and sacrificed. This theme he continues, passing through Bavaria, Poland, Bulgaria, Lagos, Benin, Marimos tribes and then Gonds of India. Baring Gould spares little detail in the description of the sacrifice rituals after the capture of Brahman boys. Somehow, he links it together as the heritage behind Harvest and Spring rituals, and these “awful rites,” outlawed in India and America – but, allegedly, still prevalent in “Africa.” 

Baring Gould is not a reliable witness of history (his own biography of Hawker of Morwenstow he himself acknowledged it was a ‘gossiping book’), and this salacious description and portrayal of other cultures is abhorrent. Africa is a continent, not a country, and Baring Gould has othered it. 

20^th-century corn-based practices

In Thurstan Peters’ 1908 History of Cornwall (updating Rev J. J. Daniell’s History and Geography of Cornwall), Peters’ explores the history of agriculture from Elizabethan times through to the turn of the twentieth century. It is mostly about crop volumes and growing regions. In his section on ‘Social Customs and Characteristics’, he recounts May Day, the practice of bonfire jumping, Helston’s Furry Day, Guize dancers. These he attributes to being relics of ‘pre-Christian observations.’ He refers to wrestling and hurling, but there is nowhere in his material that references any corn customs. 

In 1970, A. K. Hamilton-Jenkins published, Cornwall and its People, with this observation, “of all the pleasant customs and festivities which served to enliven the workaday life of Old Cornwall, those of the harvest-tide probably provided the greatest amount of happiness to the poor.” Clearly Hamilton-Jenkins has been influenced by the hijinks described by Robert Hunt. Within his account he references the ceremony of Crying the Neck, ending in the consumption of ‘neck-cutting buns’ and jars of cider or beer. It is unclear when those elements were added to the proceedings because they certainly were not noted by Mrs Bray, or other witnesses in the nineteenth century. 

In 1987 Douglas Williams wrote about the Festivals of Cornwall, in a tour of the great Cornish occasions in a “new spirit of awareness.” Williams’s work has a nostalgic air, reporting that “progress has so many cloaks of change,” and “precious few are good for Cornwall,” and that “people are slowly appreciating what is good for them.” Crying the Neck is celebrated as a tradition of the old days, consistently reported based on the accounts from the turn of the 20^th century. Williams adds his own approval to the tale of the reaper running with the neck in opposition to the dairymaid with the pail of water. 

Williams has united the custom with the Church, with the end point being the church service. He also references that the neck is woven into a Corn Dolly, like the objects held in the museum.

Perhaps the most pertinent account, and the most recent, is by Martin Matthews, member of Helston OCS and former curator of our museum. I found it in the museum’s reference library, an Oakmagic Publication, The Cornish Antiquary(November 2000). Matthews refers to the origins as pre-Christian but acknowledges their adoption into the church. He gives the origin of the revival as 1928 in St Ives, when OCS was resurrecting old traditions. As President of Helston OCS, Matthews describes the delight he had in arranging the ceremony with a local farmer – ensuring the presence of ample car-parking space to reflect the popularity of the event. The crying would take place in English and in Cornish. Old hymns would be sung in the field, and the neck then taken to the local church, followed by a pasty supper. Matthews ends that the neck would be taken back to the farm so that the spirit of the corn could be returned the following spring. 

Conclusion

From this potted history through the written histories of Cornwall, Deacon’s quote strikes home. The origin stories associated with harvest, and the practice of cutting the last sheaf, have been lost – yet the traditions still happen. OCS in their revival, have re-written the past to form a kind of new-old tradition of Crying the Neck. In it, it has moved away from the routines of the reapers in the field (as observed by Mrs Bray in 1836), capturing the corn-spirit, to become an event on the OCS calendar, in partnership with local farmers and the local church. 

It is not so much the spirit of the corn that is celebrated today, but the spirit of Old Cornwall. 

By Julia Webb-Harvey, volunteer museum researcher and PhD candidate, Falmouth University.

References

Baring Gould, Sabine, 1899. ‘Crying the Neck,’ in The Cornish Magazine edited by A.T. Quiller Couch. 

Barnett D. 1989. ‘From Arad to Catharge: Harvest Rites and Corn Dollies.’ Eretz-Israel: Archeology, Historical and Geographical Studies Journal. Yigel Yadin in Memorium edition, p1-11.

Bottrell, William. 1880. Stories and Folk-lore of West Cornwall. Penzance: F Rodda.

Bray, Eliza. 1836, ‘Crying the neck’, artcornwall.org. http://www.artcornwall.org/features/Crying_The_Neck_Mrs_Bray.htm

Campaign for Rural England, ‘Harvest traditions in England’, https://www.cpre.org.uk/discover/harvest-traditions-in-england/#:~:text=Suppers%20and%20services,local%20church%20to%20be%20blessed.

Carew, Richard. 1953. The Survey of Cornwall, 1602. London: Andrew Melrose.

Courtney, M A. 1886. ‘Cornish Feasts and “Feasten” Customs.’ The Folklore Journal. Vol. 4. No.3. p221-249. 

Deacon, Bernard. ‘The Cornish identity’, https://bernarddeacon.com/identities/the-cornish-identity/.

Hamilton-Jenkins A.K . 1970. Cornwall and its People. Trowbridge: Redwood Press.

Lambeth. M. 1994. Discovering Corn Dollies, London: Shire Publications Ltd.

Matthews Martin, 2000. The Cornish Antiquary. Penzance: Oakmagic Publications Ltd.

Peters, Thurstan. 1908. History of Cornwall (updating Rev JJ Daniell’s History and Geography of Cornwall). Truro: Netherton & Worth. 

Williams, Douglas. 1987 Festivals of Cornwall. Exeter: Bossiney Books.