The Harvester Ghost Cat Figurine - Thistle

The Harvesters appear only after the first grain has been cut.

Old Lammas records speak of pale figures emerging at dusk from the newly shorn fields, where the standing wheat had concealed them throughout the growing season. They are seldom witnessed before the final cart has departed. By then, only stubble, scattered husks and the long shadows of the harvest remain.

Earlier custodians believed the Harvesters kept account of all that had been gathered and all that had been left behind. They were treated neither as omens nor intruders, but as quiet witnesses to the turning year: spirits of labour completed, stores replenished and the first promise that winter might yet be endured.

Their appearance marks the opening of the harvest season at Lammas. They remain only briefly, vanishing as the fields are cleared and the late-summer nights begin to lengthen.

Thistle was first recorded beneath the hedge at the edge of a harvested field, where the gleaners left their baskets while they worked.

No fox crossed the boundary while Thistle kept watch, and not a single gathered ear of grain was disturbed. Old records associate him with the protection of those who gathered what remained, and with the custom of placing a dried thistle above the granary door to turn away hunger, theft, and ill fortune.

Thistle the ghost cat figurine is just short of 7 cm in height.