The stories attached to John Barleycorn are many and varied but all contain some common elements. John Barleycorn is the spirit, or the god of the corn and each year he must die by being cut down. He then suffers horrible indignities; being bound, thrashed, ground, mashed, burnt and boiled to make bread, beer or brandywine. The next year, when the sun starts to warm the soil, he springs up and the cycle starts again. The grain harvest was life and death to people in olden times and there were regional rites and customs to pay homage to the spirit of the corn. Occasionally, a sacrifice would be required and this might be an animal, or possibly an unwary stranger would come by just at the right time. It would not do to sacrifice a villager, as that would mean losing a worker.
(Click on photo for bigger image)
This is my John Barleycorn - the last remaining sheaf in the field. The background fabric, made from scraps of fleece fabric and wool tops (roving) needlefelted on to a piece of ecofelt then machine quilted, represents the stubble and the soil.
(Click on photo for bigger image)
The buttons with the black centres and the red beads represent the poppies that are always associated with corn fields. Poppy seeds stay dormant and grow in newly cultivated ground, that's why we see them on recently disturbed roadside verges and why they grew amongst the gravestones in France after the great war. In olden times, poppies did not grow in a field left fallow, so people thought the poppies in a corn field came from the blood of a sacrifice.
(Click on photo for bigger image)
(Click on photo for bigger image)
No comments:
Post a Comment