Harvest

harvest, the season of the gathering of crops. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon haerfest (“autumn”) or the Old High German herbist. Harvest has been a season of rejoicing from the remotest times. The Romans had their Ludi Cereales, or feasts in honour of Ceres. The Druids celebrated their harvest on November 1. In pre-Reformation England, Lammas Day (August 1, Old Style) was observed as the beginning of the harvest festival.

harvest festival in Indonesia

harvest festival in Papua New Guinea

Throughout the world, the harvest of the main cereal crop—typically wheat, corn, or rice—has always been the occasion for celebration. Many harvest-related customs have their origin in the animistic belief in a spirit such as the Corn Mother or Rice Mother, and the semiworship of the last sheaf was the great feature of the harvest home.

The personification of the crops left its mark upon the harvest customs of Europe. In western Russia, for example, the figure made out of the last sheaf of corn was called the “bastard,” and a boy was wrapped up in it. The woman who bound this sheaf represented the “corn mother,” and an elaborate simulation of childbirth took place, the boy in the sheaf squalling like a newborn child and, on his liberation, being wrapped in swaddling bands. In England, too, there were vestiges of sympathetic magic. In Northumberland an image formed of a wheat sheaf and dressed in a white frock and coloured ribbons was hoisted on a pole. This was the “kern baby,” or harvest queen, and was set up in a prominent place during the harvest supper. In Scotland, the last sheaf, if cut before Hallowmas (the Feast of All Saints), was called the “maiden,” and the youngest girl in the field was allowed to cut it.

Among harvest customs, among the most interesting are harvest cries. The ceremony of the Devonshire reapers, for example, was in the main a continuation of pre-Christian traditions. After the wheat had been cut, the harvest hands would pick a bundle of the best ears, which they called “the neck.” They would then stand in a ring, in the centre of which was an old man holding the neck. At his signal, they would all take off their hats and utter in a prolonged cry “The neck!” three times, raising themselves upright with their hats held above their heads. Then they would cry “Wee yen! Way yen!" or “We haven!” On a still evening in autumn, “crying the neck” had a dramatic effect when heard at a distance.