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Podcast: Bone and Sickle
Episode: Spirits of the Corn
Description: Spirits of the corn (grain) fields from the United Kingdom to Russia have been imagined as embodiments of the harvest and guardians of the fields, sometimes evolving into fantastically cruel fear-figures in the process.
We begin with a look at the Scottish and English ballad “John Barleycorn,” first appearing as a broadside in 1568. The suffering hero of the song, “Sir John,” allegorically endures the brutal process of being buried, harvested, threshed, and eventually turned into beer. We hear some snippets of the song from The Watersons and Fred Jordan.
Some, like the turn-of-the-century mythologist James Frazer, im...