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10 Prairial: Faux (scythe)

Scythe or sickle?  The sickle is a small tool, used one-handed by a stooping worker; the scythe is a long two-handed tool, swung in front of an upright worker.  Its use requires considerable practice, but for mowing or harvesting in large fields the scythe is faster and more comfortable than the short-handled sickle. 

For many people, remote from farmland, the Grim Reaper's symbolic scythe is more familiar than the real agricultural implement.  But the scythe has always been acknowledged as a very concrete danger.  Mowing in teams calls for concentration and group coordination; even a solo harvester needs to handle a scythe with discipline.  And its dangers are not merely accidental: resetting the blade in line with the shaft makes a scythe into an infantry weapon, perhaps a bit clumsy but readily available in the countryside.  The people in my photoset are Polish scythemen from the 1863 uprising. 

Even when you're done with your scythes, haymaking is a hazardous business.  Millin mentions the risk of hay combustion: microbial activity in damp hay heats up the haystack to the point of spontaneous combustion.  "One has seen entire towns burnt in such accidents," he says.

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