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A note on this entry John Barleycorn is a folk figure from the ballad tradition - the personification of barley and of the ale made from it - not a deity with a cult. The first attestation as a character is the 1624 London broadside A Pleasant New Ballad ... of the Bloody Murder of Sir John Barley-corn (Roud 164), with earlier Scottish personifications of malt (Allan-a-Maut, before 1568); Robert Burns's 1782 version is the best known. The 'dying and rising grain god' reading is a Frazerian/modern-antiquarian interpretation (popularised through The Golden Bough and the folk-revival), not the ballad's own account, and the entry's Ceres and Lughnasadh/Mabon values are modern.
Alternate Names Barleycorn The Corn Spirit
Gender Expression Masculine
Titles The Corn Spirit He Who Must Be Cut The Dying and Rising Grain
Domain The grain The harvest The ale Death and return The land The work The song Planetary Correspondence Ceres Correspondences Scents Patchouli Cedar Vetiver
Offerings Grain Bread Water First fruits Invocation Approach Address John Barleycorn The Corn Spirit He Who Must Be Cut
Relationship The grain made into a man and then into beer
Warning The song is cheerful and the story is a sacrifice
Resonance Brewers farmers those who sing the harvest songs
Symbols Stone Tree Mythology Summary John Barleycorn is the English folk figure of the barley, who in the song is buried, cut, threshed and drowned and comes back as ale, cheerfully and in rhyme. He is the dying grain god in a folk song rather than a temple, and the song is the whole of his cult.
Modern Practice John Barleycorn is honoured at the harvest and at the brewing, by singing the song and by the first glass poured out. His practice is the grain handled from field to glass with the whole cycle acknowledged.
Referenced by
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Every entry that names John Barleycorn , grouped by the system it comes from.