The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
In Russia also the last sheaf is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and
carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the last sheaf the
Bulgarians make a doll which they call the Corn-queen or Corn-mother; it
is dressed in a woman’s shirt, carried round the village, and then thrown
into the river in order to secure plenty of rain and dew for the next
year’s crop. Or it is burned and the ashes strewn on the fields, doubtless
to fertilise them.(1143) The name Queen, as applied to the last sheaf, has
its analogies in Northern Europe. Thus Brand quotes from Hutchinson’s
_History of Northumberland_ the following: “I have seen, in some places,
an image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn
placed under her arm, and a sycle in her hand, carried out of the village
in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with music and much clamour
of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day,
and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they
call the Harvest Queen, and it represents the Roman Ceres.”(1144) From
Cambridge also Dr. E. D. Clarke reported that “at the Hawkie
[harvest-home], as it is called, I have seen a clown dressed in woman’s
clothes, having his face painted, his head decorated with ears of corn,
and bearing about him other symbols of Ceres, carried in a waggon, with
great pomp and loud shouts, through the streets, the horses being covered
with white sheets; and when I inquired the meaning of the ceremony, was
answered by the people, that they were drawing the Harvest Queen.”(1145)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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