John Barleycorn must die.
John Barleycorn must die. The lanquage of metaphor using farming terminology is not new.
Of course in the case of John Barleycorn there is the use of anthropomorphism to describe the making of whiskey, from the planting of the seed, harvesting and milling it to then distill it. But to make the story interesting, this English? folksong describes the process as a kind of conspiracy to commit murder, with terms like “cut him at the knee” and “tear him flesh feom frame”
In this case though, we go from describing a farm product as a real person vs. the describing a person or persons acting as an agricultural process(ie harvest).
But the connection can be seen.