The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Runa

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.

Runa was first recorded beside a boundary stone after a farmer claimed the markings cut into his harvest tally had vanished during the night.

By dawn, the missing signs had reappeared, not upon the wood, but faintly impressed into the earth beside the last uncut row. Old records associate Runa with remembered marks, spoken vows and the keeping of rightful measure, and with the warning that anything promised at harvest must be honoured before the final sheaf is brought in.

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