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Sent off copy to Ballantyne. Drove over to Huntly Burn at breakfast, and walked up to the dike they are building for the new plantation. Returned home. The Fergusons dined; and we had the kirn Supper. I never saw a set of finer lads and lasses, and blithely did they ply their heels till five in the morning. It did me good to see them, poor things. October 27.
Kirn is understood to have enjoyed his instructor's aid in completing the statues in the Tyrol. Another religious body ranges itself in the cause of art by the side of one with which it does not habitually co-operate. Dr. Witherspoon, the only clerical Signer, is its contribution in bronze.
Kirn, the feast at the end of the harvest in Scotland. The correspondence of Robert, second Marquis of Londonderry, was edited by his brother in 1850, but there was no memoir published until Alison wrote the Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, Second and Third Marquesses of Londonderry. 3 vols. 8vo, Edinburgh, 1861. November 1.
Sometimes five or six Maidens might be seen hanging at once on hooks. The harvest-supper was called the Kirn. In other farms on the Gareloch the last handful of corn was called the Maidenhead or the Head; it was neatly plaited, sometimes decked with ribbons, and hung in the kitchen for a year, when the grain was given to the poultry.
Nothing enters a close Hand. Neir is the Kirtle, but neirer is the Sark. Need hes no law. No man may puind for unkindnesse. Neirest to the Kirk, farthest fra God. Need makes Virtue. Never rade, never fell. Nothing is difficile to a weill willed man. Need gars naked men run, and sorrow gars Websters spin. No man can seek his marrow in the Kirn, so weil as he that hes bin in it himself.
"I gave her," he said, "yesterday-e'en nae farther gane, a yard of that very black say, to make her a couvre-chef; but I see it is ill done to teach the cat the way to the kirn."
He had not been allowed to enter either of the fighting services, so he took what of adventure the country afforded the rustic merry-making of the "Kirn" in the days of harvest home, the coastwise adventure of ships, and the midnight raid of the Free Traders with their clanking keg-irons and long defiles of pack horses crowning the fells and bending away towards the North star and safety.
When he had tired himself out in vain and given up the task as hopeless, another reaper was blindfolded and pursued the quest, and so on, one after the other, till at last the kirn was cut. The successful reaper was tossed up in the air with three cheers by his brother harvesters.
Ralph Peden rose and went out. As Ralph Peden went through the flower-decked parlour in which he had met Jess Kissock an hour before, he heard the clang of controversy, or perhaps it is more correct to say, he heard the voice of Meg Kissock raised to its extreme pitch of command. Come you an' gie us a hand wi' the kirn this meenit! Ye dinna gang a step oot o' the hoose the day!"
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.
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