The
Gleaner's Sheaf Looked Like The Knot Of A Girl's Hair Woven In And Bound.
It Was A Tradition Of
The wheat field handed down from generation to
generation, a thing you could not possibly do unless you had been
Shown
the secret - like the knots the sailors tie, a kind of hand art. The
wheatstalk being thick at one end makes the sheaf heavier and more solid
there, and so in any manner of fastening it or stacking it, it takes a
rounded shape like a nine-pin; the round ricks are built thick in the
middle and lessen gradually toward the top and toward the ground. The
warm yellow of the straw is very pleasant to look at on a winter's day
under a grey sky; so, too, the straw looks nice and warm and comfortable,
thrown down thickly in the yards for the roan cattle.
After the village has gone back to its home still the work of the wheat
is not over; there is the thatching with straw of last year, which is
bleached and contrasts with the yellow of the fresh-gathered crop. Next
the threshing; and meantime the ploughs are at work, and very soon there
is talk of seed-time.
I used to look with wonder when I was a boy at the endless length of wall
and the enormous roof of a great tithe barn. The walls of Spanish
convents, with little or no window to break the vast monotony, somewhat
resemble it:
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