Cock bashing

At the end of the harvest, when only the last sheaf of wheat was left standing in the field, Sorbs / Wends (Baltic Serbs) would decorate it with colourful ribbons and would shout: "Źins jo kokot- today is the day of the cock", which means that the harvest was completed that day, and it was time for "cock bashing"...

What is "cock bashing"?...

Well...

In the past, the harvesters took a cock to the field on the last day of the harvest. There they would let him run around the field. Then they would catch him again, tie him and put him into a shallow hole in the ground. 

A beer barrel was placed about a hundred paces from the cock with its open plug hole pointed in the direction of the cock. Anyone desiring to try his hand at slaying the cock was blindfolded. The handle of a threshing flail was stuck into the barrel's plug hole. The blindfolded young man would take the handle between his legs to determine the direction of the cock's location. Then he placed the flail over his shoulder and walked towards the pit with the cock. When he thought he was standing over the pit, he would try to hit the cock with the flail. He had 3 tries. If a young man finally managed to hit and kill the cock, he was proclaimed to be the king of the harvest. Then, while still blindfolded, young maidens would circle around him, and he got to grab one to be his queen. Then the king of the harvest was lifted on the shoulders of the other young men, and was carried to the village in a festive procession...There they cooked the cock and ate it as part of the end of harvest party...

Later, this custom was practiced in a more "humane manner". The pit in which the cock lay was covered over with boards, and a pot was placed over the boards. The rest was the same. whoever hit the pot, reigned as king...

Even later, the custom became even "more humane". The cock was kept in a basket decorated with oak leaves, from which he watched blindfolded men trying to whack a pot with a flail...

The first harvester to hit the pot became the harvest king. Then the harvest king choose his harvest queen. Together, they released the cock...And the other young men then tried to catch him. To make the competition more difficult, the cock chasers were barefoot. If you ever walked on a freshly harvested field barefoot, you will know that it's a torture...The first young man to get hold of the cock became the second harvest king. The cock was then auctioned off. Then killed, roasted and eaten at the party that evening... Humanely...

Anyway, after all the cock related excitement, the men decorated their hats with ears of corn and girls made wheat wreaths which they wore on their heads. Then they all walked from the fields to the village singing all the way. Once in the village they celebrated the end of the harvest with a wild party...And roast cock...

But this was not the only Sorbian end of harvest ritual that involved cocks. The other, even better one, was called "cock plucking". Here is how it was done:

A wooden gate decorated with green oak branches was erected in a field. A cock was then tied to the crossbar by his feet, hanging upside down. 

Young men rode through the gate one after the other and tried to tear off the cock's head. 

The one who succeed was proclaimed "the first king". 

The young men who then managed to rip off the wings of the cock when passing through, were proclaimed "the 2nd and the 3rd king". The 3 winners were given large wreaths made of oak leaves. Then, the harvest kings got to pick their queens from among the village unmarried girls while blindfolded. Then the party started....With the roast cock... 

Later, it was decided that hanging up a live cock and ripping his head and wings off was not very humane...So the cock was first killed (presumably humanely) and was then hang on the gate crossbar dead...The rest was the same. 

So what the hell...

Well....

Middle of Leo, 2nd of August, is when Balkan Serbs used to celebrate the day of Perun. This was also the day that marked the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. And the end of harvest. The sacred bird of Perun, the storm god, was the fire cock. When Christianity replaced the old Slavic pagan religion, in Serbia Perun was replaced with Sveti Ilija Gromovnik (St Elijah the Thunderer, the Thundering Sun) and the cock became associated with this "Thundering" saint. 

I talked about this in my posts "The thundering sun god", "Cockerel and lion" and "Alidjun"...

Now interestingly, cock, the sacred bird of the thunder god is slaughtered, cooked and eaten on the day of St Elijah the Thunderer "so that the sun would not burn the grain". But actually as the thanksgiving to the Thunder god for "not destroying the grain during the harvest, which is the period with most thunderstorms in the Balkans". But also a prayer to the Thunder god for rain, now that the harvest was finished...

Because it is the "Sky god" who can turn this

into this

I talked about this in my post "The power of the Thunder Giant"

The cock sacrifice (because it is obviously a ritual killing) in the Baltic Serbia, is performed a bit later, in the second part of August. This is because the grain harvest starts and finishes later in the north of Europe. 

I already talked about this shifting of the same rituals to the later and later date the further and further north we go in Europe in my post "Jani"...

But it is again "the end of harvest" ritual, in which a cock (the holy bird of Perun) is killed and eaten (sacrificed to Perun) in the grain field, with a flail (tool used in threshing). It was actually believed that the fertility of the cock would be transferred to the field...

And in both versions of the ritual (cock bashing and cock plucking) the decorations of the basket and of the gate were made of green oak leaves. Oak was the sacred tree of Perun...

So there is no doubt that the Balkan and Baltic Serbian rituals are just two versions of one and the same ancient "end of harvest" thanksgiving ritual...

Now in my post "Thanksgiving" I talked about the medieval reports that pagan Baltic Slavs used to perform "end of harvest human sacrifices"...

Also in my post about "New house" I talked about obvious replacement of the human sacrifice with a sacrifice of a cock...

"It was believed that someone from the family will soon die after they move into the new house, because every house wants to have its protective spirit, which is the spirit of the first person to die in the house.  To prevent this from happening, the man of the new house would kill a cockerel on the house doorstep (the seat of the dead) and would sprinkle all four corners of the house with its blood..."

So are these sacrifices of cocs to Perun at the end of harvest just replacement for sacrificing of people to Perun at the end of harvest?

Believe or not, there are end of harvest rituals recored among Balkan Serbs, which confirm that this is in fact the case...

Dožinjalica is a cock which is slaughtered at the end of the harvest. Among the Serbs from Croatia it was believed that "grain will yield plentifully next year only where dožinjalica is eaten". On Tobolić, at the end of the harvest, the harvesters would tie the housewife with ropes. They would then light up a fire in the field where the last sheaf of grain was cut, and would "pretend to burn her in the fire"... The would let her go only after "she promised them a dožinjalica". Similar customs were also recorded among Serbs from from Northern Dalmatia. There the harvesters would "grab the housewife, cary her to a fire burning in the field, where they would pretend to roast her over the fire..." or they would "put the sickle under her throat..." so she would "promise them better dinner". In some parts "housewife was tied to the stožer, the central column of the threshing floor..." until she promised them "a good end of harvest dinner"...It is interesting that in some other places, Serbs actually sacrificed a cock to the central threshing floor column at the end of the harvest...

Here we see obvious replacement of the human sacrifice with the sacrifice of a cock...

So interesting right?

Sorce for Balkan Serbian harvest rituals "Srpski mitoloski recnik - grupa autora". Source for Baltic Serbian harvest rituals "The lost tribes of Europe, Sorbs" "Wendish research exchange"...