Klas

An ear is the grain-bearing tip part of the stem of a cereal plant, such as wheat or maize. 

If you look at the wheat plant, you can see that ear looks like a head standing on a long neck (stem). 

This is the part of the cereal plant which is collected during harvest. Harvesting cereal literally means cutting off the long necks of the wheat plants and collecting the heads of the wheat plants, the ears. 

The wheat is basically "slaughtered". 

In the past this was done by hand using sickle, and the wheat plant necks (stems) were cut quite close to the wheat head (ear). This was done to make the transport and storage of the ears of wheat easier. You can see what I mean from the next few pictures which depict grain harvest during medieval time.

Basically, the harvesting of the grain was in the past done in the same way people or animals were slaughtered: you pick the head (ears of wheat) and you slice across the neck (stalks of wheat). 

There is even a Cornish ritual of "cutting the neck of the grain spirit"...

Guldize. Guldize is Cornish language for "The feast of ricks" (i.e. grain stacks). The festival itself was held at the end of the wheat harvest and took the form of a vast feast. 

The festival started with the ceremony called "Crying The Neck".

In "The Story of Cornwall", by Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin, the ceremony is described like this:

"In those days the whole of the reaping had to be done either with the hook or scythe. The harvest, in consequence, often lasted for many weeks. When the time came to cut the last handful of standing corn, one of the reapers would lift up the bunch high above his head and call out in a loud voice.....,

"I 'ave 'un! I 'ave 'un! I 'ave 'un!"

The rest would then shout,

"What 'ave 'ee? What 'ave 'ee? What 'ave 'ee?"

and the reply would be:

"A neck! A neck! A neck!"

Everyone then joined in shouting:

"Hurrah! Hurrah for the neck! Hurrah for Mr. So-and-So" (calling the farmer by name.)"

This shows clearly that harvesting of the corn was seen as cutting of the neck of the corn plant to collect the corn heads making the corn head that which is obtained by slaughter...

The cutting of the last handful of standing corn was also symbolically seen as cutting of the head of the corn spirit. Our ancestors believed that the spirit resided in this last cut head of grain...

And this is why after the ceremony of Crying The Neck, the neck was used to make a corn effigy which was then believed to contain, preserve, the corn spirit.

In Cornwall this corn effigy, presided over the Guldize feast which later took place in the farmhouse kitchen...