Among Slavs, the last sheaf of wheat was commonly called Baba. This word means grandmother, mother, midwife, birth giver...In some places the woman binding the last sheaf the last sheaf of wheat is also called Baba...
In the Balkans bаbičiti means to make, to tie grain sheaves. I wonder this is symbolically linked with the swaddling babies cause bаbičiti also means to deliver babies...From the meaning of the word Baba in diminutive form Babica which means midwife...
All kinds of rites and beliefs are connected to the Baba, the last sheaf of wheat, including the dance of the oldest female reaper, accompanied by banter and jokes...
In Prussia, the woman binding the last sheaf represented the Corn-Mother; After she bound the last sheaf, she would lie down in the field and cry like a woman in labour, while an old woman acted as the midwife. Finally, the "midwife" would announce that a child was born...
In Northern Germany, the woman binding the last sheaf was told: "You are getting the child!" In Bohemia, people believed that the woman binding the last sheaf will have a child in the next year...
The Swabs called the one binding the last sheaf "the Old Woman" (basically Baba, Grandmother) and she was said to be married in the next year...
In East Prussia, the female reapers strove to be the one tying the last sheaf, called "the Grandmother". Whoever got it, would be married in the next year, but her spouse would be old...
Baba (Grandmother) here is Mother Earth in her role as The Mother Of Grain...Talked about this originally in my post "Mother of grain"...
Mor articles about the Mother of grain in Neolithic Europe, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant: "Altyn Tepe mother of grain", "Mother of grain from Yarim Tepe", "A person in a little boat", "Sabi Abyad venus", "Hathor grain pendants"...
Sumerians knew here as Inanna.
Inanna/Ishtar, was in "A song of Inanna and Dumuzid" described as: "Maiden, glossy mane, lovely beauty...colourful as a pile of grain, fit for the king, fit for Dumuzid! Maiden...a stack of...barley, fully developed in loveliness"...
This is Inanna speaking:
"Before my lord, Dumuzi,
I placed grain before him,
I poured out grain before him,
I poured out grain before my womb..."
Greeks knew her as Demeter...
I talk about Demeter in my posts "Demeter with dove", "Demeter riding panther", "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...
Demeter, the goddess with beautiful golden hair...Here she is as Ceres emerging from the ground holding grain, opium poppies and snakes...
I explain why in my post "Who are Persephone's parents"...
Hippolytus says that during Eleusinian harvest rituals, the priest raised a freshly cut ear of wheat with the loud cry: "The exalted goddess bore a holy boy, the strong one bore a strong child!" Sounds familiar? 🙂 I talked about this in my post "Iacchos"...
The reason why the last sheaf of wheat is called Grandmother is because all these people believed that last sheaf of wheat contained the "grain spirit", basically the spirit of The Mother of Grain...
The "grain spirit" is in European folklore usually preserved as female "corn dolly" made from the last harvested sheaf of wheat...I talked about this in my post "Corn dolly"...
In Romania the grain from the last sheaf of wheat was used to make the wreath that was then used to crown the most beautiful maiden reaper...
A living corn dolly from Romania. From my post "Wheat cross" about grain harvest rituals from Romania...
In Poland and Ukraine too...
Wheat wreath, worn by the "corn maidens" and made from the last sheaf of wheat, was the first batch of grain to be threshed on the threshing floor. This grain was then set aside for next year's sowing and was the fist grain to be sawn.
I talked about this in my post "Wheat wreath"...
The same symbolic link between Old Woman (Grandmother), Last sheaf of wheat and mother earth is preserved in the Gaelic culture...
In Gaelic, the word Cailleach means both an old woman and the last sheaf of wheat and the corn dolly made from it. Corn dolly which represents Mother Earth, the life (grain) giving mother...
I talked about this in my post "The old woman of the mill dust"...
The symbolic linking of female reapers with The Mother of Grain and of tying the last sheaf of wheat with delivering and swaddling a baby is just another example of the believed link between female and earth fertility...Which we find in Europe since Neolithic...
A gynomorphic (woman like) figurine made of "soil mixed with chaff and grain seeds" from Grčac, Serbia. Proto-Starčevo culture, 6200-5500 BC. Direct symbolic link between earth, grain and female fertility. Basically, "Mother of Grain"...
This symbolic link was still at the core of Slavic agricultural magic in the 20th century. As is shown by this Russian harvest custom:
In the past in Russia, after the last sheaf of grain was cut, women harvesters would lie down on the ground and roll around the field "to return the strength to the earth"...
In Ireland too we find this symbolic linking of land (grain sheaves) and female fertility (bride). These are Strawboys who used to call at the home of the bride on her wedding day. Co Sligo. Ireland. Early 1900s. (National Museums of Northern Ireland).
I talked about this in my post "Walking sheafs of wheat"...
This belief in the direct link between female and land fertility might have had some pretty dark implications in the past. There is an indication that in the past Serbs sacrificed girls to the Corn Spirit in exchange for good harvest...
At the end of the harvest, when only the last sheaf of wheat was left standing in the field, Sorbs would sacrifice a rooster by killing it with a flail...
I talked about this in my post "Cock bashing"...
There are actually many indications that sacrificing a cockerel was among Serbs a replacement for a human sacrifice...I talked about this in my post "Third death"...
Add to that that in some parts of the Balkans Serbs ritually "tied the housewife to the central pole of the threshing floor until she promised them roast cockerel for the end of harvest dinner"...Or the next harvest would be bad...
And you have to ask yourself a question: is this a ritual replacement for the real human sacrifice which once used to take place?
