Pre-dating the parochial ‘harvest festival,’ or the village wide ‘harvest home’, the traditional customs of harvest were celebrated by the landowners and their workforce, the people who were directly connected with the reaping of the fields .The origins of these earlier festivals are lost in time, but according to Ronald Hutton, “There is very little trace of harvest customs surviving from the century 1450-1550, but some recorded in that immediately following almost certainly obtained earlier. They include the crowning of girls as harvest queens by sets of reapers, the bringing home of the last load of corn covered in garlands, with loud acclamations, and the weaving of images from grain stalks.” 9
The cutting of the last bundle of corn was often regarded with much ceremony in the County of Northumberland, though the custom was open to interpretation. Up to the mid nineteenth century in the northern part of the county, and parts of Berwickshire a competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch was held. The reapers gathering round the sheaf and threw their sickles at it in turn 6, “the winner of the competition was said to have “Got the Kern””. 7 “The word Kern or Kirn being a corruption of the word Corn”. 1
In some areas, the winner of this competition then decides who can dress the kern, which is made up to look like a baby or a doll. “A curious image was produced – an image dressed in a white frock with coloured ribbons and crowned with corn ears – stuck on a pole and held aloft by the strongest man of the party while the rest circled round it.” 8
“The Kern was then raised up and the cry “I have her, I have her, I have her!” The other shout “What have you? What have you? What have you?” They answer, “A mare! A mare! A mare!” “Whose is she?” the reply being the owner, whose corn is all cut. “Wither will you send her?” the reply being to a neighbour whose corn is all still standing, and then they shout three times and return in triumph, thrusting the Kern Baby into the faces of any one they meet, and demanding a tribute before they will allow them to pass. In some valleys before leaving the field the reapers raise the Kern, singing:
“Blessed be the day our Saviour was born,
For master—–’s corn’s all shorn.
And we will have a good supper to-night,
And drinking of ale with a Kern, a Kern, a Kern!”
In others the variation of the rhyme runs:
“The master’s crop is ripe and shorn,
We bless the day that he was born,
Shouting a Kern, a Kern, a Kern!” 6
When all was done the kern baby was taken from it in which it was placed and carried to the farmhouse when loud cries of “kerney, kerney, hoo.” 6
After all the fields have been cut, it is common in for a supper to be provided by the landowner to all the harvesters and the servants of the family, this is known by different names in the north, sometimes called a Mell Supper, Churn supper or Kirn Supper. At this the servant and his master are alike and everything is done with an equal freedom. They sit at the same table converse freely together and spend the remaining part of the night in dancing, singing” 2 “intermixed with rustic masquerading and playing uncommon tricks in disguise. Sometimes a person, attired in the hide of an ox, [im]personates the devil.” 3
Such a supper was reported in the Morpeth Herald in 1857 at Kirkley:
“On the 14th inst., the Reverend E. C. Ogle of Kirkley, gave a grand treat to his workmen and their wives and families who are employed on his estate, on completion of the harvest operations. The joyous proceedings came off at Thorneyford Farm, where an excellent supper was provided. Mrs. Ogle and the Misses Ogle were present and took much interest in attending to the comforts of the company. After a supper, a ball was held in a spacious room which was tastefully decorated for the interesting occasion, with flowers and evergreens. At one end of the room was place the “Kirn Bawbee” between two sheaves of wheat, representing peace and plenty, and bearing the emblems of contentment in the right hand and the merry emblems of love and mirth in a wreath formed the head dress; and an evidence that these happy emblems were fully borne out by the company present, was visible in their beaming countenances, with great glee and animation till a late hour and before dispersing to their homes gave three hearty cheers for their generous master and his family” 4
The fate of the kirn- doll was then taken to the farmhouse and hung up there till the next harvest, when its place was taken by the new kirn-dolly6 There is no indication in any of the sources as to the fate of the earlier doll, it may be that the doll was discarded, re-ploughed into the soil, or even kept.
Slowly over the years the parochial tradition of harvest increased, and the old traditions suffered. In little more than thirty years everything had changed. In an editorial in the Morpeth Herald in 1882, the full extent is shown.
“We are now in the midst of harvest festivals which are being everywhere held in our local district. The wonder, the gratitude, the piety felt towards the Great Author of Nature, when it is brought before us that once more, as it has ever been, the ripening of a few varieties of grass has furnished food for the earth’s teeming millions, insure that there should everywhere be some sort of feast of ingathering or festival. The former method of conducting the harvest feast is fast disappearing, and the old-fashioned ‘kirn’ is being displayed by the more modern parochial festival in which the whole parish generally takes part. One cannot but regret the dissuade of that ancient harvest-supper in which our forefathers reveled. The hospitality of that old-fashioned gathering and other similar agricultural feasts, was a bond of union between the farmer and his work people, of inestimable value. The modern harvest festival, as a parochial thanksgiving for the bounties of Providence, is an excellent institution, in addition to the old harvest-feast, but it cannot be considered as a substitute for it” 10
By 1895 the only village keeping the vestiges of the kern baby was Whalton. The Vicar, Canon Walker, who was interested in tradition, included the kern doll as part of the parish harvest festival, a tradition which continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1901, Sir Benjamin Stone MP visited Whalton to take photographs of that year’s sculpture. One of the resulting photographs is shown here.
This image was also included in Stone’s book on Festivals and Customs, printed in 1906. Alongside the photograph he writes.
“Though the Kern baby, as the figure was generally called, is seldom seen nowadays even in Northumberland, it is still made at Whalton. The villagers’ effigy, which is about 2 ft in height, is taken to church, and is afterwards the presiding genius at the harvest festivities”.7
Two years after the death of Canon Walker, the Morpeth Herald printed a piece on the harvest festival in Whalton and how times were changing.
“The Harvest Festival at Whalton has always a distinctive feature of its own. In early times the church needed no decoration; and none was thought of for the parish had its kirn babby which was decoration sufficient, as it stood on its accustomed place, a silent witness that harvest was ended. In time, as at other places, the parish church of Whalton came to be decorated otherwise, and always with the best of taste; but under Canon Walker, the kirn babby was the important feature.” 9
[1] Antiquities of the Common People – Mr. Bourne 1725
[2] Observations on Popular Antiquities – John Brand, 1777
[3] A Historical, Topographical and Descriptive View of the County of Northumberland, E. Mackenzie, 1825.
[4] Harvest Home – Morpeth Herald, October 31st, 1857
[5] Murray’s Northumberland, a handbook to Durham and Northumberland part II, 1873.
[6] The Golden Bough – J. G. Frazer, 1890.
[7] Sir Benjamin Stone’s pictures -Festivals and Customs, 1906.
[8] Canon Walker’s – Morpeth Herald and Reporter 27 September 1912.
[9] The Rise and Fall of Merry England – Ronald Hutton 1994
[10] Our Own Column – Morpeth Herald, October 21, 1882