[29] There was a custom at one time, that the last handful of corn that was cut, and which finished the harvest, was taken home by the reaper, who was usually the youngest person in the family who could reap. The bunch was tastefully decorated and kept, at least till the following year, as the harvest maiden. [30] It was also a custom in other times for old women to go about asking charity, and if infirm, they were carried about from house to house and villages, and whoever was last in a township to finish the reaping of his corn had to maintain one that year, and the same thing might happen to him the next year. When the run-rig system was common, the last furrow of corn was sometimes left standing as no one could be got to own it, through fear of having to keep the old woman for a year. THE DARK, OR PITCH-PINE, DAUGHTER OF THE NORSE KING, AND HOW SHE THINNED THE WOODS OF LOCHABER. When the Norsemen came, and their visits were frequent and numerous, to this country and these islands, to lay claim to and take possession of the land, the fame they gathered for themselves through their indulgence in every manner of cruel spoliation, and slaughter of the people wherever they landed, was that they were a bold, courageous, hardy, rough (“The Norsemen a rough band”), peremptory and unscrupulous race, and more than that, it was attributed to them that they practised witchcraft, charms, and enchantments, and had much of other unhallowed learning among them. The Norse King’s eldest daughter was particularly noted for her knowledge of the “Black Art.” There was no accident or mischance that befell friends, or destruction that overtook enemies, or any luck or good fortune that attended either friend or foe, but it was said that she was the cause of it, or had some hand in it. She was famed at home and abroad, far and wide, for her skill among cows and cattle, she was said to possess every variety of dairy knowledge in her father’s kingdom. There was no charm or evil eye that fell on any living creature in the fold but she could dispel and avert, nor hurt nor injury they got but she could heal, nor dizziness nor fits into which they fell, from which she could not restore them, until it was said of her that the lowing of cattle, the incoherent cry of calves, and the rough cry of yearlings was to her the sweetest and most soothing music, and that she would answer the call of cattle, though she might be lost in the midst of the northern woods, and the cry from the nethermost part of the farthest off quarter of the universe. She knew the herb that had the property of taking its qualities from milk, as well as she was acquainted with the spells by which its virtues could be restored, and every charm and invocation that was practised or then esteemed. The flowers of the meadows and woods were as familiar to her as the ridges of corn or a grain on straw, and there was not a leaf on tree, bush, or shrub, with whose properties she was not acquainted.