The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Bjarne

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.

Bjarne was first recorded beside a newly built grain rick after knocking was heard from within it throughout the night.

By dawn, the stack had been opened and a blackened, smouldering hollow discovered at its centre, though no flame had reached the barn. Old records associate Bjarne with the hidden heat of grain stored before it is dry, and with the warning that what is hurried into shelter may yet destroy what patience gathered.

Bjarne the ghost figurine is just short of 9 cm in height.