The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Henry

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.

Henry was first recorded along a cart track where fallen ears of grain had been gathered by the village gleaners.

Though the fields had already been cleared, he remained until every scattered grain had been collected and the final basket carried home. Old records associate Henry with the right of the hungry to glean after harvest, and with the warning that no Lammas table could be called abundant while another stood empty.

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