1. Weird UK Names for Scarecrows
In Britain the humble straw sentinel carried many names as dark and strange as the twilight fields they guarded. On Scottish hillsides one might meet a “tattie-bogle,” in Welsh a “bwbach,” elsewhere a “hodmedod” or “murmet”—each name whispering old dialects, old superstitions, old fears of the crop-devouring birds. These names reveal how deeply embedded the scarecrow was in folk belief: not just an object in the field, but a character, a watcher, a piece of rural myth.
2. Japanese Kakashi
In mist-shrouded rice paddies of Japan, the figure of the kakashi stands sentinel—an effigy once fashioned from old rags, straw and the smell of smouldering deterrents. Japanese farmers did not merely assemble a scarecrow; they conjured a guardian. Some were dressed in raincoats, wide straw hats and even given bows and arrows to ward off crows hovering over the shimmering waters. In Shintō mythology the deity Kuebiko appears as a scarecrow-like being—unable to walk yet all-knowing, standing forever in place, watching fields, weather and the shifting seasons.
3. German Witch-Scarecrows
Across medieval Germany, the fields were haunted not just by crows, but by carved wooden figures in the shape of witches. These weren’t simple substitutes for human labour; the witch-scarecrows were believed to absorb the dark energies of winter and usher in the hope of spring. German farmers sometimes called them “bootzamon” or “bogeyman”-figures, human-shaped and clothed in old garments, meant to scare pests — and perhaps other things lurking beyond the fields.
4. Medieval Britain Used Young Boys as Bird Scarers
Before the straw man rose to his post, medieval British fields employed living watchers: young boys (and sometimes girls) who walked the rows, waving arms, throwing stones, clapping boards to scare the black wings that threatened the grain. But as population loss and labour shifts changed the landscape, these children were gradually replaced by silent figures of straw—still charged with vigilance, only now unmoving.
5. It Was the Plague That Reduced the Population and Increased the Need for Scarecrows
The mass deaths of Black Death and other plague outbreaks devastated Europe’s working population. Farms found fewer hands to stand sentinel in the fields, and thus the straw-man rose in place of the child-scarecrow. The padded sack on a pole, face carved from gourd or turnip, became a grim yet pragmatic response to labour scarcity. In that shift lies a story of mortality and adaptation: death accelerated the rise of the silent watcher.
6. The Village of Scarecrows
In the remote Japanese hamlet of Nagoro, a new chapter in the scarecrow saga plays out. With real people leaving, the artist Ayano Tsukimi repopulated the village by creating life-sized kakashi—hundreds of them. They sit on benches, in schoolrooms, by the roadside; they outnumber the living, hauntingly still. The village becomes both tribute and elegy: a place where the scarecrow is not merely guardian of the crops, but keeper of memory.