Crying the Neck


Crying The Neck is a harvest festival tradition once common in counties of Devon and Cornwall in the United Kingdom in Europe. The tradition declined following the invention of machines such as the combine harvester.
The tradition is no longer known to be practised in Devon. In Cornwall, however, the tradition was revived in the early twentieth century by the Old Cornwall Society.

Ceremony

In The Story of Cornwall, by Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin, the following explanation is given on the practice:
The rest would then shout,
and the reply would be:
Everyone then joined in shouting:
"
Robert Hunt wrote in his Popular Romances of the West of England that the neck would be hung in the farmhouse after the ceremony.

Modern popular culture

In a harvest scene in the third episode of the second series of the 2015 of Poldark, Francis Poldark performs the tradition at Trenwith, his estate.
In a harvest scene in the third episode of supernatural drama The Living and the Dead, Charlotte Appleby performs the tradition at her husband's family farm, which she manages.