As long as mankind has grown crops he has had to devise ways of keeping birds from eating the fruits of his labour. A hungry flock of birds could deprive a family from having enough food to last through the winter, so for more than three thousand years, some form of scarecrow has been in existence.

Egyptian farmers put wooden frames covered in nets in their fields to protect wheat fields from flocks of quail. The birds became tangled in the nets, from where the farmers were able to capture and eat them.

Two and a half thousand years ago, Priapus, the son of Greek gods, Dionysus and Aphrodite, had the dubious fortune of a medical condition, later termed ‘priapism‘, that made him so successful at scaring the birds away from the grapes in the vineyard where he lived, that the harvest at this particular farm was the best for miles around. Neighbouring farmers began to carve nude, wooden effigies of Priapus to use in their own vineyards. They painted the statues purple,  placed a club in one hand to make them appear fiercer and a sickle in the other to effect a good harvest.  The Romans adopted Priapus and began to copy the statues,  conveying the idea to France, Germany and England as they travelled.  

 Japanese farmers began protecting their rice fields at about the same time as the Greeks. They hung old rags, meat and fish bones from bamboo poles before setting the sticks on fire. The smell was so bad that nothing came near the rice. Their word for scarecrows, ‘kakashis’, means literally, ‘smells badly’. The Japanese progressed to making scarecrows that looked like people, dressed in clothes made of reeds and a round straw hat that rose to a point in the middle. Bows and arrows were often added to increase the scare-factor.    

In Medieval Britain, children were employed to act as ’shooers’, patrolling the fields carrying bags of stones. Crows or starlings would be chased away by flailing arms and thrown stones.   When the plague of  1348 killed off half the nation’s population, landowners  were unable to find enough youngsters to protect their crops and began to stuff sacks with straw, adding carved heads fashioned out of turnips, hoisting  the resultant figure on a pole.

As a new generation of children grew they continued to patrol the fields, now having to cover much large acreages, but carrying wooden clappers instead of stones, making a noise which could scare whole flocks of birds. Bird shooers continued to patrol the fields of Britain until the 1800′s when new factories and mines offered better wages and opportunities for the children employed. The stuffed scarecrows really came into their own now, became more elaborate, with a cross beam for arms and dressed in cast off clothing.  They could be seen in almost every field and garden for  many years. Local fetes often ran competitions, mainly for children but not always, to see who could produce the best made, funniest or most like a known personage .

After World War II, farming became big business. There was no longer room for ineffective,  stuffied dummies. Crops began to be dusted, by government order, with poisonous chemicals such as DDT, with no thought of any impact on long term health or genetics for those who worked the land or those who ate the produce. Giant whirligigs were set in place to scare the birds and a bright spark at a British firm invented the ‘Automatic Crop Protector’ - which I remember well. It consisted of a metal box with three metal arms,  set on a pole. The box contained large caps of gunpowder which exploded with a huge boom every 45 minutes or so,  setting the arms flapping up and down, clashing together like tin, roofing panels that had come adrift. This went on all through both day and night. The contraption did what it said. No man, bird or beast wanted to go near the crops and everyone within a four mile radius was either petrified or lost their hearing.  Propane gas powered boomers were another,  gentler,  alternative.

Today, although lasers, recorded bird-distress calls and humming electricity lines are used in very highly commercial sectors, amongst the everyday farming community there is a growing concern for environmental issues, resulting in a swing back to non-mechanical methods of scaring away those pesky crows. Reflective PET ribbons, strings of CD’s and foil packaging can be seen rustling in the breeze, but ever increasingly those quirky scarecrows are back in vogue.

The scarecrow-making competitions never altogether went away, but in 1985, Suffolk College of Art and Design used the theme of  Scarecrows as a springboard of inspiration for their students. The idea grew like Topsy, evolved into  a Great International Scarecrow Competition, held on the lawns of Ipswich’s Christchurch Mansions, attracted entrants from all over Europe and was sponsored by Adnam’s brewery.  A one off  event, not extravagant prizes, but the publicity was overwhelming. The idea just captured the public’s imagination and suddenly everybody lived close to a village that held an annual scarecrow festival.

There are several in our area but by by far the best is at Muston, near Filey.  Muston’s annual Scarecrow Festival was begun in  1999 and has only had to be cancelled once since then – 2007, the year of the great floods when most of Yorkshire floated atop a muddy sea and my own family spent some very comfortable nights courtesy of RAF Leconfield. The festival has international renown with visitors from as far away as Japan and Canada planning their holiday dates around it, there have been features on American television and special coach trips arrive from all over Britain. Last year’s model of the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,  even got a mention in ‘Hello’ magazine.

Nearly all the villagers contribute  in some way towards the festival. There is one notable exception. The landlord of the village pub complains that he came to Muston for a bit of peace and quiet, but has now become as famous for his disgruntlement as the village has for the mannequins and I suspect that he doesn’t object to the extra custom that the festival brings. This year, two scarecrows sit outside the pub. 

Some of the scarecrows are works of art, taking many hours of thought and construction. Committee member, Mal Magson, runs workshops in the weeks leading up to the event, encouraging participants to put in as much detail as possible. It is community art at its best and I’ll bet there are many stories to tell about folk who thought that they couldn’t but discovered that they could. There are the inevitable in-jokes that visitors are never likely to understand, the professions and likenesses of some of the villagers put in their appearances and commentaries on current affairs sit amongst the fairytale characters and film stars. Last year’s Gordon Brown has re-invented himself as the Phantom of the Opera. The recent royal visit to the area is re-enacted and there is opportunity to discover the unusual truth of what Scottish men really do keep under their kilts.

Within All Saints Church there is a festival within a festival. This year the theme is ‘Screen World ‘ and every corner of the beautifully kept church is crammed with flowers, artwork and displays depicting different movies and television shows.  For the first Sunday of the festival, the vicar, Rev. Jeff Hattan, holds an open-air service on the village green, joined by the congregation of Hunmanby Parish Church, and a number of the morning visitors. Murals painted by church warden, Duncan Bell, adorn the church yard and nave. (I promised lovely octogenarian, Duncan, that I would give him a mention, so I have and this is one of his paintings shown left). Donations from previous Scarecrow festivals have allowed the church to do some substantial refurbishments and maintenance work, but also to make  substantial gifts to local charities.

 This is a village where there is a real sense of cameraderie and sharing. The making of scarecrows at Muston may have little to do with scaring the birds and protecting the crops, but it has had an effect of protecting the rural nature of village life. A scarecrow has limited potential in a field; the birds soon recognise its passivity and settle on its outstretched arms. Muston is a place that has come to settle easily on the far reaching fame that the annual Festival  has brought into its midst and seems all the stronger a community for it.

If you want to catch the Scarecrow Festival at Muston it runs until August 1, 2010, involves a leisurely walk around a pretty village with refreshments and some delicious homemade cakes available at both the village hall and the church. If you fancy something stronger or more substantial there’s always the pub – just don’t mention the ‘S’ word whilst you’re there. There are far worse ways for a family to fritter away a summer’s afternoon.