A Harvest Experience
1973; Routledge; Volume: 84; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0015587x.1973.9716518
ISSN1469-8315
Autores Tópico(s)Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
ResumoTHIS happened in I937 on the island of Vallay off North Uist. At low tide one could walk there across Vallay strand but even so it was wet walking and better to go with a horse and cart. When the tide was in one went by boat. We had stayed there for two summers simply as a holiday place and I had got to know the people thereabouts a little. They were mostly Gaelic-speaking though a good many of them had fluent English as well. There was little cultivation on this sandy island, only thin and patchy oatfields or sometimes bere, an inferior kind of barley mostly used for horse feed. The small field close to the house where we stayed had this crop and while I was there the two old men to whom the field belonged were scything it and binding by hand. I had been accustomed to help with farm work all my life so I went out to the field to help to bind, making the binding with a few straws and the knot twisted and tucked under. It was very sore on the hands because the bere has sharp awns like barley. They were speaking to one another in Gaelic and at that time I knew none myself. We were coming to the end of the field and I was gathering up and binding the last sheaf. The two old men came up to me and I became aware that something was happening though I did not at once see what, nor did I realise that it was I who had bound the last sheaf in the field. The two of them put a straw twist round my waist, knotting it as though I too had been a sheaf. They spoke slowly and seriously in Gaelic and I do not know what they said but at the end one of them spoke in English saying to me: 'go back to the house and keep the binding and you will get your wish'. It seems to me now that I was clearly the cailleach, the old woman (or maiden), the sacrifice. At the time I felt rather shaken and I did not as a matter of fact get my wish. Perhaps I took the binding off too soon. During my first year or two here at Carradale when I was still
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