Old Harvest Customs in Scotland
“According to a briefer account of the Aberdeenshire custom, ‘the last sheaf cut, or “maiden,” is carried home in merry procession by the harvesters. It is then presented to the mistress of the house, who dresses it up to be preserved till the first mare foals. The maiden is then taken down and presented to the mare as its first food. The neglect of this would have untoward effects upon the foal, and disastrous consequences upon farm operations generally for the season.’ In Fifeshire the last handful of corn [i.e., wheat], known as the Maiden, is cut by a young girl and made into the rude figure of a doll, tied with ribbons, by which it is hung on the wall of the farm-kitchen till the next spring. The custom of cutting the Maiden at harvest was also observed in Inverness-shire and Sutherlandshire.”
—J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn & of the Wild, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. VII, 1912, p. 162)
Historical example of a European corn dolly in the Horniman Museum, ph. by scholar Ethan Doyle White.
(Source: Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
