Thus while each farmer keeps his own Maiden, as the
embodiment of the young and fruitful spirit of the corn, he passes
on the Old Wife as soon as he can to a neighbour, and so the old
lady may make the round of all the farms in the district before she
finds a place in which to lay her venerable head. The farmer with
whom she finally takes up her abode is of course the one who has
been the last of all the countryside to finish reaping his crops,
and thus the distinction of entertaining her is rather an invidious
one. He is thought to be doomed to poverty or to be under the
obligation of "providing for the dearth of the township" in the
ensuing season. Similarly we saw that in Pembrokeshire, where the
last corn cut is called, not the Maiden, but the Hag, she is passed
on hastily to a neighbour who is still at work in his fields and who
receives his aged visitor with anything but a transport of joy. If
the Old Wife represents the corn-spirit of the past year, as she
probably does wherever she is contrasted with and opposed to a
Maiden, it is natural enough that her faded charms should have less
attractions for the husbandman than the buxom form of her daughter,
who may be expected to become in her turn the mother of the golden
grain when the revolving year has brought round another autumn.
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