Why Keep the Last Sheaf? Something Was Supposed to Live in It

Across a great many European farming communities, the cutting of the last standing corn was marked in some way, and the straw from it was frequently plaited into a figure or an ornament that was carried home with ceremony, kept in the farmhouse over the winter, and ploughed into the field or fed to the livestock in spring. The forms varied enormously by region, from simple twists and knots to elaborate figures with names that differ between counties. Cutting the last sheaf was itself ritualised, frequently with reapers throwing sickles at it from a distance so that nobody could be identified as the one who struck the final blow.

The variety is considerable and the names are local:

• •Spirals and lanterns, made by plaiting straw around a hollow core
• •Figures representing a woman, a bride or an old woman
• •Horseshoes, bells, crowns and knots
• •Large elaborate constructions carried in a harvest procession
• •Simple twisted favours worn or pinned up indoors
• •Modern competitive work at agricultural shows, using techniques recorded before they were lost

The standard explanation holds that a spirit of the corn retreated before the reapers into the last standing stand, so that cutting it would kill or trap the spirit, which is why the final sheaf was treated carefully and kept over winter as a dwelling until it could be returned to the field. That reading was set out at length by James Frazer in the late nineteenth century and became the standard account. It has been criticised heavily since, on the grounds that Frazer assembled comparable-looking customs from across the world into a single theory, that the interpretation is largely his rather than the participants', and that the people performing these customs when they were recorded generally described them as tradition rather than belief.

The custom belonged to a whole sequence of practices marking the end of the harvest, and the others explain why the moment mattered so much. Bringing the last load home was accompanied by a procession, with the cart decorated and the workers riding on it. A supper provided by the farmer for everybody who had worked was the principal obligation of the season and is recorded across Europe under many local names. Payment was settled then, since much harvest labour was hired for the period. Church services of thanksgiving were held. The whole thing marked the point at which a year of risk resolved into a known outcome, which in a subsistence economy determined whether the coming winter would be survivable.

Mechanisation ended the practice almost completely within a few decades, and the reason is straightforward rather than cultural. A reaper and binder and then a combine harvester cut a field in a pattern that produces no last standing stand and no intact long straw, since the machine threshes and chops as it goes. Modern short-strawed wheat varieties are also useless for plaiting, being too short and too brittle, so practitioners import or grow older varieties specifically. The craft survived through a deliberate revival from the mid twentieth century, with guilds, competitions and published instructions, and it now exists as a practised craft rather than as a farming custom.

The last straw of a harvest was plaited into a figure, kept through winter and returned to the field in spring, with the cutting of the final stand itself ritualised. Frazer's explanation about a corn spirit retreating into the last sheaf became standard and has been criticised as his interpretation rather than the participants'. Combine harvesters leave no last stand and no long straw, and the craft survives through deliberate revival.