This is an excerpt from the diary of Julius MacPhereson, the father of Hugh MacPhereson. Julius, as many know, is considered the forefather of skig research.
April 12, 1814
It was cold, windy, and rainy today, but I decided to take a constitutional to Brunnough Moor early in the morning despite the weather. After several hours of walking through the muddy spring fields, I decided to return to the manor. Being absolutely miserable by the time I reached home, I was joyful to find that my maidservant had made me hot tea and a warm fire. For the rest of the day, I stayed close to the fire, away from the gloom of dark halls and windy knolls.
At around 5:00 in the evening, the heavy thump of a horse’s hooves on the beaten road woke me from my deep contemplation. Soon after, a man knocked on the door loudly. I got up and moped to the door with a wool blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I opened the door, and there stood a brute of a man, completely soaked and muddy, with his horse in not a much better state of affair. I allowed the man in and Jeeves took the horse to the stable. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, he had a loud, thundering voice fit for the floors of Parliament, had it not been for his use of the commoners’ jargon. After a few minutes of conversation, I found Lord Wellingsworth, from Oxford, sent him with a charge of books and manuscripts that he entrusted me to look over. Luckily, the courier took better care of the books than for himself, and the rain had not been permitted into his rucksack. I paid him with a large tip and he left hastily.
I immediately began pouring over my newly acquired treasures in the den. The hours passed while I read the information and attempted to piece it together with the notes I made in the past. Before long, the clock struck midnight, and I decided to write this entry before going to the bedchamber. Here is some information I just discovered, and it remains electric within my brain.
The “corn men” I’ve been trying to understand now seem all the more real with the literature from Lord Wellingsworth. Rather than having events recorded of corn men attacks, one of the small books had the anatomy and society of a skig. Much seemed erroneous, but the 14th century monk who wrote it, Father Estatius, provided me with valuable information. The corn man he discovered after a small battle was, obviously, made of corn. However, the monk didn’t quite know what corn was, so he made reference to it being a “substance used by Satan from the brine pots of Hell.” I managed to read over the extensive spiritual writing, and discovered skigs are held together with a corn cob-like bone structure. Their skin is like the husks of a corn plant packed tightly, or as the monk called it, “long, dried, yellow broad-leaves pushed together and glued to create a strong armor.” Contradictory to that, the corn men seem to perish easily and on most accounts, are poorly created.
The skigs also possessed a large camp of poorly made factories and processing plants, which seem to be the sole producers of the corn warriors. Evidence from the other books that I received were accounts of battles fought between corn men and British troops, once in 1689 and another in 1712. Little is still known of what raw materials are needed to create corn men, but I will discover this in time with hope.
I must remember to send a gift to Lord Wellingsworth as soon as possible for providing me with such valuable information. For now, my eyes are tired and my bones weary. Hence, I will sleep.
Lord Julius Macphereson