The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

181Corn-mother is told that she is about to be brought to bed; shecries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in the characterof grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the [151]child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheafwhimpers and squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps asack, in imitation of swaddling bands, round the pretended baby,who is carried joyfully to the barn, lest he should catch cold inthe open air. 507 In other parts of North Germany the last sheaf, orthe puppet made out of it, is called the Child, the Harvest-Child,and so on, and they call out to the woman who binds the lastsheaf, “you are getting the child.” 508In the north of England, particularly in the counties ofNorthumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, the last corn cut onthe field at harvest is or used to be variously known as the mell orthe kirn, of which kern and churn are merely local or dialecticalvariations. The corn so cut is either plaited or made up into adoll-like figure, which goes by the name of the mell-doll or thekirn-doll, or the kirn-baby, and is brought home with rejoicingsat the end of the harvest. 509 In the North Riding of Yorkshire thelast sheaf gathered in is called the Mell-sheaf, and the expression“We've gotten wer mell” is as much as to say “The Harvestis finished.” Formerly a Mell-doll was made out of a sheaf ofcorn decked with flowers and wrapped in such of the reapers'507 W. Mannhardt, l.c.508 W. Mannhardt, l.c.509 Joseph Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, vol. i. (London, 1898) p.605 s.v. “Churn”; id., vol. iii. (London, 1902) p. 453 s.v. “Kirn”; id. vol.iv. (London, 1903) pp. 82 sq. Sir James Murray, editor of the New EnglishDictionary, kindly informs me that the popular etymology which identifieskern or kirn in this sense with corn is entirely mistaken; and that “baby”or “babbie” in the same phrase means only “doll,” not “infant.” He writes,“Kirn-babbie does not mean ‘corn-baby,’ but merely kirn-doll, harvest-homedoll. Bab, babbie was even in my youth the regular name for ‘doll’ in thedistrict, as it was formerly in England; the only woman who sold dolls inHawick early in the [nineteenth] century, and whose toy-shop all bairns knew,was known as ‘Betty o' the Babs,’ Betty of the dolls.”The last corn cutcalled the mell,the kirn, or thechurn in variousparts of England.The churn cut bythrowing sickles atit.