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

199custom in Bernara and other parts of the Western Isles, while inMull the last handful is the Maiden, and they have no Cailleach.In North Uist the habit still prevails of putting the Cailleachover-night among the standing corn of lazy crofters.” 548The general rule to which these various accounts point seems In these customsto be that, where both a Maiden and an Old Wife (Cailleach) arefashioned out of the reaped corn at harvest, the Maiden is alwaysmade out of the last stalks left standing, and is kept by the farmeron whose land it was cut; while the Old Wife is made out ofother stalks, sometimes out of the first stalks cut, and is regularlypassed on to a laggard farmer who happens to be still reapingafter his brisker neighbour has cut all his corn. Thus while eachfarmer keeps his own Maiden, as the embodiment of the youngand fruitful spirit of the corn, he passes on the Old Wife as soonas he can to a neighbour, and so the old lady may make the roundof all the farms in the district before she finds a place in which tolay her venerable head. The farmer with whom she finally takesup her abode is of course the one who has been the last of all thecountryside to finish reaping his crops, and thus the distinctionof entertaining her is rather an invidious one. Similarly we sawthat in Pembrokeshire, where the last corn cut is called, not theMaiden, but the Hag, she is passed on hastily to a neighbour whois still at work in his fields and who receives his aged visitorwith anything but a transport of joy. If the Old Wife representsthe corn-spirit of the past year, as she probably does wherevershe is contrasted with and opposed to a Maiden, it is naturalenough that her faded charms should have less attractions for thehusbandman than the buxom form of her daughter, who may beexpected to become in her turn the mother of the golden grainwhen the revolving year has brought round another autumn. Thesame desire to get rid of the effete Mother of the Corn by palmingher off on other people comes out clearly in some of the customs548 R. C. Maclagan, “Corn-maiden in Argyleshire,” Folk-lore, vii. (1896) pp.78 sq.the Old Wiferepresents the oldcorn of last year,and the Maiden thenew corn of thisyear.[167]