Or it is burned and the ashes
strew on the fields, doubtless to fertilise them. The name Queen, as
applied to the last sheaf, has its analogies in Central and Northern
Europe. Thus, in the Salzburg district of Austria, at the end of the
harvest a great procession takes place, in which a Queen of the
Corn-ears (_?hrenk?nigin_) is drawn along in a little carriage by
young fellows. The custom of the Harvest Queen appears to have been
common in England. Milton must have been familiar with it, for in
_Paradise Lost_ he says:
"Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest flow'rs a garland to adorn
Her tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As reapers oft are wont their harvest-queen."
Often customs of this sort are practised, not on the harvest-field
but on the threshing-floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before
the reapers as they cut down the ripe grain, quits the reaped corn
and takes refuge in the barn, where it appears in the last sheaf
threshed, either to perish under the blows of the flail or to flee
thence to the still unthreshed corn of a neighbouring farm.
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