*The Dandelion Harvest Festival at The Field in Alness. Pic Ewen Weatherspoon/Dandelion*

This article was first published in the West Highland Free Press on 29 September 2022

For the past year Mairi McFadyen has been working with Dandelion - a celebration of growing, creativity and culture culminating in community harvest festivals across Scotland earlier this September. Her role involved researching and sharing some of the traditions, folklore, customs and crafts associated with the growing year and harvest. In this article, she shares some examples from Tobar an Dualchais - Kist O Riches.

Much of the folklore and tradition associated with harvest across Scotland comes from a time when people were far more connected to the land, to the cycle of the seasons, to the patterns of the agricultural year - a time when the whole community would depend upon each other for their well-being and survival.

The older traditions follow the rhythm of the old Gaelic calendar, organised around the solstices and equinoxes by which seasons could be predicted. Harvest season traditionally began around August 1st with Lunastal or Lammas - a time for gathering in and giving thanks for abundance - and continued on towards Samhain, or Halloween.

In the past, people had very little access to science – such as weather reports! – and, perhaps unsurprisingly, there were many beliefs and customs surrounding the harvest. An ancient and widespread custom across northern Europe was related to the cutting of the ‘last sheaf’ of the crop, or the sguab mu dheireadh - perhaps oats, barley, or wheat. This tradition introduced an element of competition in the fields, which was thought to speed up the work and get the crop safely secured more quickly.

One of the reasons for this was the belief that ‘spirit of the corn’ was present in the grain. As the harvest proceeded, this spirit would become concentrated in the remaining crop, and the final sheaf to be cut would contain its distilled essence. Once cut, the sheaf was crafted into a superstitious charm, which could take the form of a simple plait of straws tied up with ribbon, or may be crafted into a corn dolly and even clothed.

As Calum MacLean writes (Scottish Studies, vol. 8, 1964), traditions relating to the last sheaf were found all over Scotland in various forms and with various names. In Gaelic it was called the maighdean-bhuana (the harvest maiden), the cailleach or cailleach-bhuaineadh (the old woman of the harvest), or clàidheag. In the Northeast and the Northern Isles it was often called the harvest maiden or the clyack. In some places it was the youngest female who cut the sheaf; in others it was the oldest person in the community. It was sometimes considered good luck, sometimes bad. It’s fascinating to listen to the different explanations on Tobar an Dualchais - for example, this recording of William Forbes speaking to Ann Ross in Highland Perthshire in 1964 (Track ID 75601) or Janet Shaw speaking to Calum Maclean in the Island of Jura in 1953 (Track ID 6998).

After the harvest feast, the last sheaf was looked after and displayed in the home over winter until it was time to start the growing process all over again. The charm was often fed to the birds, horses or ploughed back into the field for good luck, or to replenish the new year’s soil with the spirit of the corn.

Dandelion/ Elaine Lindsay, Something Corny

In Scotland, different places had different names for their harvest celebrations. It was often called the ‘Harvest Home,’ but in other localities it was also known as a ‘Kirn’, a ‘Meal and Ale,’ a ‘Muckle Supper’ or Deireadh Buana in Gaelic. These were events for the whole community to take part in and served as a thank you to all those who had helped make the harvest successful. There would be plenty of food and drink as well as games, divination, music, singing and dancing. There are so many recordings discussing this on Tobar an Dualchais, it’s hard to select a few!

First is a cheerful recording from John MacDonald in Elgin, with an explanation of the last sheaf, a dram and the tune ‘Harvest Home’ played on the melodeon (Track ID 25999). Here is a recording of Calum Maclean interviewing Kate MacRae from Lochalsh about the feasting and dancing at the Fèis Deireadh Bhuana (Track ID 1283). And in Orkney, Ethel Findlater speaks to Alan Bruford about the ‘Muckle Supper,’ which used to take place in people’s homes before the Harvest Home events became popular after the building of the village halls (Track ID 64275):

‘And then of course after the harvest wis all in and they hed their potatoes up and everything ready for the winter, and the cattle all inside, they had a jollification they called the ‘muckle supper.’ And it was just held in the farm house and in the barn…the ones that had been helping them in the harvest time they would all invite...Plenty to eat and plenty of fun. Somebody would maybe sing a song or two...and then they danced ‘til maybe four o'clock in the morning!’

In areas that were predominantly Catholic, harvest festivities were intertwined with Christian Feast Day of Michaelmas, celebrated on the 29th of September. This was true of many places in South Uist. Alexander Carmichael in Carmina Gadelica writes at length about this festivity and shows just how ritualised and important every aspect of significant days such as this were. The celebrations included baking of the strùan cake, horse-racing and a procession of the area (always deiseil or sunwise), followed by the exchanging of gifts - such as specially harvested wild carrots - and an evening of singing and dancing. In a recording from 1966, Christina Mackay explains that the flour from the first crop of corn and other delicious ingredients went into the strùan cake (Track ID 60570).

For centuries, harvest festivities such as these provided an annual opportunity not just to celebrate the safe securing of the crop for winter, but to celebrate community identity itself - to reflect together on the season that had passed and look forward to the one to come.

In a recording from Glenlyon in Perthshire, John Fisher reflects: ‘there was more neighbourliness in these days than what there is now. Folk weren’t living just for money entirely. It was more community spirit, you know, which you don’t get nowadays. Money’s done all that out.’ (Tape SA1988.20).

A great example of this is the practice of the ‘lovedarg’, which means ‘work done for love’ - darg being the Scots for a day’s work. This usually took the form of a friendly day’s ploughing, sowing or harvest help given to a neighbour in need. It was celebrated as a significant event in the local community, often with food and music. Crucially, the lovedarg was a service given not in exchange for money or even for charity, but in solidarity - what today we might call a form of ‘mutual aid.’ The idea was that by investing in your neighbour you are investing in yourself, because you never know when you might need help too. Here, John Fisher explains to fieldworker Gary West:

‘A lovedarg - say you had just taken a farm over or had been ill and had fallen behind in your work, all the neighbours would come and plough the ground for you. When we moved into a farm when I was a boy, we had no horses and all the neighbours came - and they ploughed the whole lot...Everything was done. That was to help you start, you see?...It was kindness itself.’

While this is an example from Scots-speaking rural Highland Perthshire, the sentiment of the lovedarg was of course at play in island communities too. In this recording from Kyles Paible in North Uist, John MacDonald speaks to Eric Cregeen about the different ways in which crofters would help each other:

‘That was the custom in those days...they were helping in every way. If one of the crofters happened to be behind with the harvest, all the other crofters would turn out and give them a hand.’ (Track ID 18083).

In this recording from Berneray, local Bàrd Baile Catherine Dix tells the story of an old woman in North Uist who woke up to find all her corn had been cut and stooked by the people of Balmartin. They had seen her out with the scythe in her petticoat, doing the best she could, before she went home and fell asleep in her chair from exhaustion (Track ID 60474).

Like many harvest traditions across the world, these practices and festivities display features of generosity, reciprocity, hospitality, cooperation and stewardship of the land. At their heart is a life-affirming conviviality and strong sense of community - something that so many of us today have lost. But it would be wrong to fall into a nostalgia for ‘the good old days,’ blaming today’s generation and modern culture for such a social transformation. This blinds us to the fact that it is the continuing driving forces of a capitalist economic system - a shift over several decades towards commercialisation and privatisation of our lives and work – that has eroded and fragmented our sense of community.

Not only that, but scientists are telling us that this economic system is destroying the very conditions that support life on Earth. With climate crisis posing a grave threat to our collective future and the economic and social shocks of the coronavirus pandemic still reverberating, we need to build local and community resilience.

For me, this is what Dandelion’s message of ‘sow, grow, share’ is all about, building community through growing. We must remember that conviviality itself is not commodifiable. Drawing on the past, we can re-seed ideas as inspiration for new culture making for our own time. While we may not be cutting the last sheaf for the same reasons or in the same fashion, we can create new traditions which contain the germ of change for a more hopeful future.

Newspaper Article: Tobar an Dualchais: A Rich Harvest from Autumnal Traditions, West Highland Free Press