[Sca-cooks] Corn dollies.

[Patricia Dunham]

goshes! well, it looks like there are lots of videos on-line about making corn dollies, but have you ever thought of filming your mother's process (if she's still with you, or you know it yourself?) for documentation of what was done in her particular time and place? Some sociology grad student would probably bless you someday, 8-)

chimene
 
On May 4, 2014, at 12:09 PM, Drew Shiel wrote:

> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Aruvqan <aruvqan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I have to think [and this is pulled right out of my arse, honestly] that
>> corn dollies originated in handsfull of grasses and the straw found after
>> harvest being twisted into little people to amuse small kids that are being
>> tended by the sides of fields while the harvest is going on. Perhaps out of
>> the scattered stalks of wheat or whatever grain being gleaned by the
>> aunties and grannies asked with watching them.
>> 
> 
> I can tell you that this was the case in Ireland in the late 1940s/early
> 1950s, at least. My mother showed me how such 'dolls' were made, and a few
> ways in which they were dressed in various leaves, and given hair from
> finer grasses, and so on. She was raised on a farm in Co. Wicklow which was
> small enough (and hilly enough) that they still had horse-drawn ploughs and
> harvested grain with scythes.
> 
> Now whether that's something that continued through from earlier periods,
> or was made up by some enterprising relative more recently, there is no
> real way to tell, but my impression from the variety of looks the dolls
> could be given is that it was at least a couple of generations old in her
> time.
> 
> Le meas,
> Aodh
> 
> -- 
> http://about.me/drewshiel
> "Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where
> you least expect it there will be a fish." -- Ovid.