Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/278

270 the harvesters on this occasion a supper of curds and cream, but this is now replaced by tea. With regard to the "Kirn," the Rev. Mr. Cameron, minister of the parish, told my sister that sometimes the cream is whipped up very stiff and mixed with oatmeal ; into this mixture the ring, thimble, and sixpence are placed. Mrs. McLaren told my mother that some people make arms of straw to the "Maiden." Before leaving the "Maiden" I may add that my mother remembers seeing the "Maiden" at Daldouie, near Glasgow, many years ago, though she is not sure of the name by which the figure went. So far as she remembers, it had a ribband tied round its head and one round its waist ; and the stalks were neatly arranged to represent the skirt of a woman's dress. It was kept hanging on the wall. Mr. Duff, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, tells me that in his part of Aberdeenshire there is a competition as to who shall have the last sheaf (the clyack sheaf) like that at Balquhidder, but with this difference, that the last corn left standing and hidden is cut by the reaper himself, not, as at Balquhidder, by the girl who followed binding. Mr. Duff adds that he was informed by a perfectly trustworthy authority, that in an English county it was the custom for all the harvesters to worship the last corn in the field by bending the knee and bowing the head to it. To return to Balquhidder. The old man who assisted at the cutting of the "Maiden" explained a mode of divination by throwing the reaping-hook ever the shoulder, but as he seemed to speak English with difficulty I could not be sure that I fully understood him. He seemed to say that one man took all the reaping-hooks of the reapers in a bundle and threw them over his shoulder three times. The man whose hook stuck in the ground twice would die soon. Omens were also drawn from the direction in which the hooks fell. At Hallow e'en each house has a bonfire. They do not dance round the fires. The custom is chiefly observed by children. The fires are lighted on any high knoll near the house. In the churchyard at Balquhidder is a green knoll known to English-speaking people as the Angels' Mount. The Rev. Mr. Cameron told us that "Angels" is here a corruption of the Gaelic aingeal, the name of the knoll being Tom-nan-aingeal, i.e. "the hill