"
In some parts of Scotland, as well as in the north of England, the
last handful of corn cut on the harvest-field was called the _kirn,_
and the person who carried it off was said "to win the kirn." It was
then dressed up like a child's doll and went by the name of the
kirn-baby, the kirn-doll, or the Maiden. In Berwickshire down to
about the middle of the nineteenth century there was an eager
competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch of standing
corn. They gathered round it at a little distance and threw their
sickles in turn at it, and the man who succeeded in cutting it
through gave it to the girl he preferred. She made the corn so cut
into a kirn-dolly and dressed it, and the doll was then taken to the
farmhouse and hung up there till the next harvest, when its place
was taken by the new kirn-dolly. At Spottiswoode in Berwickshire the
reaping of the last corn at harvest was called "cutting the Queen"
almost as often as "cutting the kirn." The mode of cutting it was
not by throwing sickles. One of the reapers consented to be
blindfolded, and having been given a sickle in his hand and turned
twice or thrice about by his fellows, he was bidden to go and cut
the kirn.
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