The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Signe

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.

Signe was first recorded beneath a harvest crown woven from the season’s final ears and carried at the head of the homeward procession.

Though rain fell before the village was reached, the crown remained dry and none of the grain beneath it spoiled. Old records associate Signe with the safe carrying-home of the harvest, and with the warning that the final sheaves must enter beneath song, not silence, lest the field believe its gifts were taken without thanks.

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