Corn

“ Orchards and cornfields ring with the hum of labour; trees bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. ”

“ The corn, oh the corn, and the yellow, mellow corn! Here's to the corn, with the cups upon the board! We've been reaping all the day, and we'll reap again the morn And fetch it home to mow-yard, and then we'll thank the Lord. 2 The wheat, oh the wheat, 'tis the ripening of the wheat! All the day it has been hanging down its heavy head, Bowing over on our bosoms with a beard of red: 'Tis the harvest, and the value makes the labour sweet. ”

“ When fields of corn are shimmering in the sun, we know exactly how it would seem to run through those dusty aisles, swept by that silken drapery, and counselled in whispers from the plumy tops so far above our heads. ”

“ Is there no corn to be had? The earth yields enough for all that dwell upon it. God has made full provision for every living thing. "He crowns the year with his goodness; and his paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing." ”

“ The larches lifted their branches, which had drooped, curving upwards as a man raises his arms above his shoulders, and the slender boughs became set with green buds. At a distance the corn is easily distinguished from the meadows beside it by the different shade of green; grass is a deep green, corn appears paler and yet brighter—perhaps the long winter has given it the least touch of yellow. ”

“ When you are husking corn your mind is apt to be more on your tender hands than on your work, but still one has a chance to do a little thinking from time to time. Husking corn—in fact, all the work of this last harvest, such as digging potatoes, pulling roots, and caring for vegetables—brings one into a closer dealing with nature than the grain harvest earlier in the season. Wheat, oats, and barley are reaped by machinery and thrashed by machinery, so that your contact with them is never intimate. ”

“ They stooped, grasped the wet, soft hair of the corn, lifted the heavy bundles, and returned. She was always first. She set down her sheaves, making a pent house with those others. He was coming shadowy across the stubble, carrying his bundles. She turned away, hearing only the sharp hiss of his mingling corn. She walked between the moon and his shadowy figure. ”

“ The corn in the furrow, waving in the western wind, and with golden sunlight among its golden stems, is preparing for the loaf no less than when bound in bundles and lying on the threshing-floor, or cut and bruised by sharp teeth of dray or heavy hoofs of oxen, or blows of swinging flails. ”

“ They are countless. To illustrate, you take a perfectly ripe kernel of corn—you will have some here perhaps in a few days—and if you get a glass, it does not require a very powerful one, and you take the chit of this corn and open it, you behold distinctly a stalk of corn, in that chit, a perfectly grown stalk of corn, with ears and leaves on it, matured, out in blossom,—there is the tassel, there are the ears and there is the corn! ”

“ If you have ever watched the little corn begin to march across the black lands and then slowly change to big corn and go marching on from the little corn moon of summer to the big corn harvest moon of autumn, then you must have guessed who it is that helps the corn come along. It is the corn fairies. Leave out the corn fairies and there wouldn’t be any corn.
All children know this. All boys and girls know that corn is no good unless there are corn fairies. ”

“ The way of the lovers, as they plodded ever southward and westward, led them now past vast fields of yellowing wheat already beginning to ripen for the thresher. Sometimes they drove for miles through towering walls of broad-bladed, cool, green corn ”

“ In polite homes they have corn holders, and dainty little knives for splitting it open so that the butter can soak in, and all manner of helps to make corn eating a dainty pleasure. They can have them in their homes all they like, but out here, under this beautiful sky, dotted with stars like tiny lanterns to show us what to do, give me my ear of sweet corn and let me eat it this way. ”

“ Of the corn grown in the United States, there are three general kinds: field corn, sweet corn, and pop corn. Field corn, as a rule, is grown in large quantities and allowed to mature; then it is fed to animals or ground and cooked for the use of man. This corn consists of three varieties, which are distinguished by the color of the grain, one being white, one yellow, and one red. All of them are made into a variety of preparations, but the white and the yellow are used as food for both man and animals, whereas red field corn is used exclusively for animal food. ”

“ The spirit of the corn, fleeing before the reapers as they cut down the ripe grain, quits the reaped corn and takes refuge in the barn, where it appears in the last sheaf threshed, either to perish under the blows of the flail or to flee thence to the still unthreshed corn of a neighbouring farm.491 Thus the last corn to be threshed is called the Mother-Corn or the Old Woman. Sometimes the person who gives the last stroke with the flail is called the Old Woman, and is wrapt in the straw of the last sheaf, or has a bundle of straw fastened on his back. ”

“ Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. ”

“ The voices of women and young girls came cheerily from the breezy midst as they tilled the ground, where flourished in their proper divisions the three varieties of maize known to Indian culture, "the six weeks' corn, the hominy corn, and the bread corn." ”

“ I gathered of these flowers for pressing.
Now we are on second bottom land. Corn! Corn! It makes me tired to think of little girls dropping pumpkin seeds in but one row of these great fields, some a mile long, and so well worked, there is scarcely a weed to be seen. Some are working their corn for the last time. It is almost ready to hang its tassel in the breeze. The broad blades make one great sea of green on all sides of us. Fine timber cultures of black walnut, maple, box elder, and cottonwood. ”

“ Corn in all its bearings is a peer of wheat. It is in one sense our contribution to the world’s list of grains, and in this we justly take pride. It is more largely grown than any other crop, and as a source of natural wealth it stands ahead of wheat. As a plant corn is most interesting, being plastic and quickly responsive to any favoring conditions. If corn is king, as some claim, wheat is certainly queen in this royal family of cereals.
BREAD. BY MRS. EMMA P. EWING.
The first thing to be considered in bread making is the yeast. ”

“ This corn is sown upon a spot of ground never before cultivated; which ground is dressed and prepared by the warriors alone, who also are the only persons that sow the corn, weed it, reap it, and gather it. When this corn is near ripe, the warriors fix on a place proper for the general feast, and close adjoining to that they form a round granary, the bottom and sides of which are of cane; this they fill with the corn, and when they have finished the harvest, and covered the granary, they acquaint the Great Sun,224 who appoints the day for the general feast. ”

“ It is green corn time and the tender ears of corn are at last ready for use. The corn plants are now as high as a man’s head and although the ears are fully formed, the kernels are tender and milky. They are still white: the brilliant colors will not appear until they begin to harden later on. Each day as the men come home from the fields they bring baskets of corn to their wives. The fresh corn is roasted, baked, boiled or stewed and great quantities are eaten when the families gather around their food bowls for the evening meal. Much of this green corn is also prepared for winter use. ”

“ By corn, in its enlarged sense, the farmer means all such crops as are grown for their seeds; so that all kinds of grain and pulse, such as peas and beans, belong to the corn crop, as distinguished from roots and green crops. ”

“ Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural implements, and thrown into the water. ”

“ At the beginning of the harvest they pluck an ear of corn and say, ‘Whatever god is the guardian of this place, this is your share, take it, and do not interfere.’ The last plants in the field are cut and sent home by a little girl and put at the bottom of the grain-bin of the house. ”

“ They speak of corn as their mother. The chief of a religious fraternity cherishes as his symbol of high authority an ear of corn in appropriate wrappings said to have belonged to the society when it emerged from the underworld. The baby, when twenty days old, is dedicated to the sun and has an ear of corn tied to its breast. ”

“ His corn, beans, pease, and potatoes were abundant, and all the other good things, whether to eat boiled, raw, or roasted. Our table was almost embarrassed by these riches, which perhaps helped us to weaken on the chicken idea.
I think our favorite staple was corn—green sweet corn, carried directly from the patch to the pot, and from the pot to the table. If you have not eaten it under these [Pg 223] conditions you have never really known what green corn should be like. The flavor of corn begins to go the moment it is pulled from the stalk, also the moment it leaves the pot. ”

“ By dint of great industry I finished my lessons an hour earlier than usual, and ran into the garden to see how my corn looked. Old gardener himself admitted that it was beautiful; the glossy, green leaves fell back like silken streamers, and displayed the grain with its many shades of green, gold, and brown.
I thought how delightful it would be if I could build a kind of bower over against it, in which my cousins could sit and admire it at their leisure. There were some hop plants growing just in the right place ”

“ We have seen that sometimes the young corn-spirit, whose task it is to quicken the corn of the coming year, is believed to be born as a Corn-baby on the harvest-field.947 Similarly in Berry the young corn-spirit is sometimes supposed to be born on the field in calf form; for when a binder has not rope enough to bind all the corn in sheaves, he puts aside the wheat that remains over and imitates the lowing of a cow. ”

“ There are several sorts of Indian corn, and of different colours; namely, white, red, yellow, mixt, &c. A small sort of yellow corn is ripe much sooner than most of the other sorts, but yields a smaller produce. White and yellow are the most common sorts, but there are several kinds of these. A good ear of corn contains from 14 to 20 rows, and from 40 to 50 grains of corn in each row. A hundred middling ears of corn will yield a bushel of clear corn. The Americans live mostly on corn-bread; the English eat but little of it. I have now growing 12 acres of it ”

“ After the third year there was seed for all, and corn became the best and surest food for all the Indian tribes. When the white men came, they ate it, too, and by cultivation made new kinds and colors. Now we have the sweet or sugar corn, the Davy's, and we have popcorn, too, which is only a dwarf corn with a hard, flinty shell which pops open with heat. ”

“ The sun may scorch the corn and try hard to dry it up, but the corn takes care of itself, bringing the moistures that make the corn, and also the beans, sunflowers, squashes, and tobacco grow.
“The corn possesses all this magic power. ”

“ When they are further advanced in life, they pick up the sodden scattered grain of the farm-yard; which, but for their assiduous searchings, would be lost. To them also are allotted large quantities of corn which are shaken by the winds from the over-ripened ears in the field. On this clean and simple food they soon become fat, and their flesh is accounted delicious and nourishing. ”

“ The baseline of our weights and measures is to be found in a single grain of corn, such as would seem to be Nature's gift—the staff of life! It was a natural standard for agriculturists, who would be the first to use it, to adopt. ”

“ This is of all lands with which we are acquainted, by far the best for the growth of corn. It is so fruitful in the produce of corn that it yields continually two hundred-fold, and when it produces its best it yields even three hundred-fold. ”

“ Their corn being ripe, they gather it, and drying it hard in the Sun, conveigh it to their barnes, which be great holes digged in the ground in forme of a brasse pot, seeled with rinds of trees, wherein they put their corne, covering it from the inquisitive search of their gurmundizing husbands, who would eate up both their allowed portion, and reserved seed, if they knew where to finde it. ”

“ It is wonderful that corn should grow there, and still more wonderful how a plough should ever get at such steep and broken precipices. I dare say, there were not fewer than sixty people, as busy as bees. ”

“ This northern word is plainly a corruption of corn baby, or image, as is the kern supper, of corn supper. In Carew’s ‘Survey of Cornwall,’ p. 20. b. ‘an ill kerned or saved harvest’ occurs.”
At Wellington in Devonshire, the clergyman of the parish informed Mr. Brand, that when a farmer finishes his reaping, a small quantity of the ears of the last corn are twisted or tied together into a curious kind of figure, which is brought home with great acclamations, hung up over the table, and kept till the next year. ”