Harvest Dolls

Corn Lady handmade by Elaine Lindsay of Something Corny, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Shared as the earth element in our centre in 2014.

The corn dolly or cailleach, the old hag, sometimes fashioned from the first or often the last sheaf of the field, was woven into a golden figure. It is said how you bound the stalks together revealed how tidy a person you were at home. Better tight and clean than with trailing ears of corn and slack?

There are many designs, some as a figure or a symbolic pattern such as a cornucopia.

2016 - Marta and Dana in Switzerland tried their hands at making straw dollies.

This corn dolly, made during a ceremony, wears a ribbon given to us by the Ballyvourney priest who keeps the wooden statue relic of Gobnait. The ribbon has been 'measured' against the statue and having touched it carries the relic's healing vibrations.

Our centre at St. Gobnait's well in Cork was based on the corn dolly a representation of Crom Dubh. Read more here about Crom Dubh and Lughnasadh. Around the edge we have seasonal fruits, crystals, Rock Salt, Honey and Barley.

The corn dolly is often buried in a grave and this serves two purposes.

• The first to remind the earth how a crop should ripen for next year and
  

• secondly it represents the harvest of unwanted energies in our bodies and within the wider world.
  

The Corn dolly is believed to take these concerns to the under world where they are broken down and transformed by the great chemical laboratories of the earth and turned into nourishment for the crops.

The traditions rely on it as a representation of the current harvest. However, whatever the time of year you might care to fashion a corn dolly, maybe using string or wool if there is no corn available; remember some success or achievement and then bury it, asking the earth to bring about a renewal of that success in your life.

The spirit of the corn lived within the field and crop, harvest the corn and the spirit is homeless. At Teltown, returning a corn cailleach to earth to inspire next year's growth.

Harvest is a time to mourn Harvest is a time to mourn, We cut and break the dying corn, And leave the fields bare. In Spring we tell the corn we care In Spring we walk the fields and share Our love with nature’s growing life But with harvest comes death’s long sharp scythe. Harvest is a time of grief, We tie the corn into a sheaf, And husk and chaff we rip and tear. Harvest is a time of woe, We claim the seeds we helped to grow, Cook them in a burning fire, An oven like an ancient pyre.

We bake the bread to fill our bellies And the corn’s great seed discovers what hell is. A cruel time this harvest season For summer’s high sun reveals the reason Why we plant and why we give, It is truly so that others may live. Harvest is a time of death A time to stop and take a breath And if you live to take another Thank the corn and bless earth mother. Save some seeds, a few to sow, For from this death new life may grow.

In Northern Ireland this last sheaf of wheat was called "Calacht". It was ritually cut by the harvesters as seen on this photo entitled "Cutting the ‘Calacht’" by WA Green. Image sourced from the National Museum of Northern Ireland. From - Old European Culture.