(M130) In these Aberdeenshire customs the sanctity attributed to the last corn cut at harvest is clearly manifested, not merely by the ceremony with which it is treated on the field, in the house, and in the barn, but also by the great care taken to prevent it from touching the ground or being handled by any unchaste person. The reason why the youngest person on the field, whether a girl or a boy, is chosen to cut the last standing corn and sometimes to carry it to the house is no doubt a calculation that the younger the person the more likely is he or she to be sexually pure. We have seen that for this reason some negroes entrust the sowing of the seed to very young girls,(532) and later on we shall meet with more evidence in Africa of the notion that the corn may be handled only by the pure.(533) And in the gruel of oat-meal and ale, which the harvesters sup with spoons as an indispensable part of the harvest supper, have we not the Scotch equivalent of the gruel of barley-meal and water, flavoured with pennyroyal, which the initiates at Eleusis drank as a solemn form of communion with the Barley Goddess Demeter?(534) May not that mystic sacrament have originated in a simple harvest supper held by Eleusinian farmers at the end of the reaping? 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.”(535) In Fifeshire the last handful of corn, 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.(536) The custom of cutting the Maiden at harvest was also observed in Inverness-shire and Sutherlandshire.(537)