The First Straw Heart
Many, many years ago when people still believed in the corn spirit there lived a young girl called Elowen and as was necessary in these times, she spent her Autumn days helping with the harvest. Her job was to assist with tying the straw into sheaves.
Elowen was a slow, careful worker. She had a habit of smoothing each individual stem and mummering a thank you to the corn spirit for the gift of that stalk.
One year the villagers experienced a hard season of storms. The wheat was thin and straggly. The villagers were worried. They thought that maybe the harvest spirit had abandoned them. Elowen considered this. Then, when she had finished her work she gathered the final fallen stems, which would normally be overlooked as they were bent or broken, and carried them home.
‘I will make something to show the harvest spirit how much we love him’, she said. She sat by her hearth and started to weave. Yet she didn’t make a corn dolly , a lantern, a horseshoe or any other familiar shape. Instead she bent the straw into gentle curved shapes. Slowly a new shape grew. It was rounded on each side and the ends meet at a point in the centre.
A heart.
She tied it with red thread as it was a warm vibrant colour.
The next morning, she placed it in a corner of the field and whispered, ‘This is for you. We haven’t forgotten you. We love you.’
That day the wind changed direction, the sun shone and the stubble in the field took on a golden hue. The grown ups noticed the peacefulness which had descended on the land and believed that the harvest spirit was now rested.
From then on people started to weaved hearts which they hung in their kitchens or barns or gave to friends in times of worry. They became a symbol to demonstrate love.