Harvest festival

“ At seed-time a festival is celebrated in order to secure the good growth of the seed. The Bahau of Borneo, who have the agricultural year [1121] , celebrate two great festivals, one at the sowing (tugal, from nugal, ‘to sow’) , and one after harvest, the festival of the new rice-year, dangei, which however is not held if the harvest has failed; it is the climax of the year. At both festivals the people gorge themselves to the full, rice being given even to the animals. ”

“ The restless hopes of spring have dropped away
In fruitful generation, and desire
Died with the virgin petals’ snowy fall,
But many a fruitful hour and glorious day
Close soul to soul, beside the evening fire
We celebrate the harvest festival.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1928.
This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”

“ The harvest-festival is called bluput, which means that the people fulfil their promise to antoh. It lasts from five to seven days, and consists mostly of dancing at night. Neighbouring kampongs are invited and the guests are given boiled rice, and sometimes babi, also young bamboo shoots, which are in great favour and are eaten as a sayur. When the harvest is poor, no feast is made. ”

“ On the other two days of the year, when the harvest festival is held, every inch of available space is occupied. The native children, unable to see over the heads of the men and women when they are upon the ground, quickly mount the neighbouring walls, and perch themselves in the branches of the trees, or cling, like monkeys, to every lamp-post and telegraph pole within sight of the proceedings. ”

“ Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent—the promotion of fertility in plants, animals and man—may occur at almost any time of the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn 57and early winter among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas festival to promote and protect the sun’s heat at the winter solstice. ”

“ A ROMANCE OF THE HARVEST FIELD.
A large field of ripe wheat surrounded by a fringe of trees; a long line of sun-brown reapers, of all ages and of both sexes, stretching across the whole breadth of the field, and bending to their work; the golden shocks falling before the gleaming sickles; and over all a warm autumnal haze.
It is a great occasion, a sort of annual festival to which people have flocked from every quarter of the country. There are solid-looking Highlanders in garments rough-spun, and smelling of peat reek ”

“ Frazer’s Golden Bough, that the cleansing of the penus Vestae was nothing but a survival of a general purification of store-houses, barns, utensils, and probably of all the apparatus of farming, including perhaps human beings, 154before the completion of the harvest which was now close at hand. The date of the Vestalia is indeed too early to let us suppose it to have been a real harvest festival, nor had it any of the joyous character found in such rites; and, as we shall see, the true harvest festivals are to be found in the month of August. ”

“ The new year is equivalent to the new harvest, the new supplies of food which through the raising of the taboo are blessed and made accessible. Where there are several fruits which ripen at different times there may be several ‘new year festivals’, as among the Thonga, but usually there is one principal sowing-time and consequently only one festival. A festival of this nature forms the great division of the year, and this fact is emphasised by the ceremonies which aim at clearing away everything old and beginning again. ”

“ But there were no children playing amongst the shocks and stacks, no reapers with sickles, or gleaners filling their turned-up skirts with the scatterings left behind; the mechanical reaper gathered every straw. And there was no Harvest Home. The village churches all had their Harvest Festivals, exactly like ours in Australia; but the procession of the Last Waggon through the golden fields, the Harvest Supper—they are gone with the piquant Valentine and the jovial Waits, to return no more. ”

“ Singing and dancing are universal, and festivals are given at appointed times and places by every tribe. The long nights of winter are devoted largely to worship, and a succession of festival days are established, to be held at appropriate seasons for the worship of the gods. Thus there are festival days for invoking rain, there are festival days for thanksgiving—for harvest homes. In lands where the grasshopper is an important food there are grasshopper festivals. In lands where corn is an important food there are green-corn festivals ”

“ Hoe-culture unites the members of the mark in the activity of sowing, whereas labour with the plough separates them and imposes the work exclusively on the men. Harvesting the grain, on the other hand, long continues to remain a task in which individuals work in groups, women and men together. Moreover, as the magical beliefs associated with the activity of sowing gradually disappear, their place is taken by joy over the assured harvest. This also factors towards changing the time of the main festival from the beginning to the end of the season. ”

“ Such a garland finds its place at all the seasonal feasts; but whereas in spring and summer it is naturally made of the new vegetation, at harvest it as naturally takes the form of a sheaf, often the last sheaf cut, of the corn. Then it is known as the ‘harvest-May’ or the ‘neck,’ or if it is anthropomorphic in character, as the ‘kern-baby.’ Summer and harvest garlands alike are not destroyed when the festival is over, but remain hung up on the May-pole or the church or the barn-door until the season for their annual renewing comes round. ”

“ The season has now advanced to full maturity. The corn is yielding to the sickle, the husbandmen,
"By whose tough labours, and rough hands,"
our barns are stored with grain, are at their toils, and when nature is despoiled of her riches and beauty, will, with glad and joyous heart, celebrate the annual festival of
THE HARVEST HOME. BY CORNELIUS WEBBE.
Hark! ”

“ Accordingly the people pay great respect to the spirits of the departed, and they hold a thanksgiving festival in their honour at the close of the harvest. When the new corn has been reaped and ground, a portion of it is made into porridge and carried to the quarters of the principal wife. ”

“ Mr. Frazer, in his Golden Bough has collected some examples of this practice, though he has not brought them together under one head or given them a single explanation. The most striking, and at the same time the best attested, example is as follows [619] :
152‘Among the Creek Indians of North America, the busk, or festival of firstfruits, was the chief ceremony of the year. It was held in July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians would eat or even handle any of the new harvest.... ”

“ We have had much rain, but not too much for the hay and wheat. The ground is as full of water as a soaked sponge, the wells are full to the brim, and all the streams are either overflowing their banks or full to the level of the ground. Enthusiasts say that never before has there been a better prospect of a good harvest. The fruit trees are crowded with blossoms that have not yet opened. The garden, looked at across the chicken-wire fence, shows the seeds and weeds all sprouting lustily, but the ground is too wet for any work to be done. ”

“ Over the fields of yellowing fall wheat and barley, of grey timothy and purple clover, the heat shimmered in dancing waves. Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the light and heat with eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was ringing through the land. The air was sweet with scents of the hay fields, and the whole country side was humming with the sound of the mowers. It was the crowning time of the year; toward this season all the life of the farm moved steadily the whole year long ”

“ II Sunday comes in a Western wheat harvest with such sweet and sudden relaxation to man and beast that it would be holy for that reason, if for no other, and Sundays are usually fair in harvest-time. As one goes out into the field in the hot morning sunshine, with no sound abroad save the crickets and the indescribably pleasant silken rustling of the ripened grain, the reaper and the very sheaves in the stubble seem to be resting, dreaming. ”

“ The magical notions which, in part at least, explain the garland customs of the agricultural festival, are still more strongly at work in some of its subsidiary rites. These declare themselves, when understood, to be of an essentially practical character, charms designed to influence the weather, and to secure the proper alternation of moisture and warmth which is needed alike for the growth and ripening of the crops and for the welfare of the cattle. ”

“ The farm grows almost all the necessaries of our table. Our soil is too poor for wheat, but rye and buckwheat flourish on the mountain-sides; whole slopes and ledges, too dry for hay, are a garden of tall, crisp, white flowers, where the buckwheat (sarrazin) waves through August until mid-September. A little before Michaelmas the flowers die, the seed turns gradually black, the stems coral-red; and then the farm-hands come and reap the harvest, bringing great sheets of linen, which they spread in the field, and thrash thereon the grain with high-dancing flails. ”

“ Afterwards the priestesses lay offerings of food, wrapt in banana-leaves, here and there on the holy field, while they croon prayers to the spirits in soft tones, which are half drowned in the clashing music of the gongs. On another day women gather all kinds of edible leaves in their gardens and fields, boil them in water, and then sprinkle the water on the consecrated rice-field. But on that and other days of the festival the people attend also to their own wants, banqueting on a favourite species of rice and other dainties. ”

“ For a time when the harvest was done, when the ricks were thatched ready for threshing, there had been a moment of ease. But with the coming of October, the pressure began again. The thought of the coming frost and of all those greedy mouths of cattle, sheep, and horses to be filled through the winter, drove and hunted the workers on Great End Farm, as they have driven and hunted the children of earth since tilling and stock-keeping began. ”

“ The grain-harvest has been given to Summer; of all its treasures, she preserves alone the fragrant buckwheat and the golden maize. The nobler fruits are all hers—the finer peaches and plums, the choicest apples, pears, and grapes. The homely, but precious root-harvest belongs to her—winter stores for man and his herds. And now, when the year is drawing to a close, when the blessings of the earth have been gathered and stored, when every tree and plant has borne its fruits, when every field has yielded its produce, why should the sun shine brightly now? ”

“ When the harvest has been gathered from our strong, true land, a growth comes on which late in the year causes the earth to regain somewhat of its old greenness. New blades spring up in the stubble of the wheat; the beeless clover runs and blossoms; far and wide over the meadows flows the tufted billows of the grass; and in the woods the oak-tree drops the purple and brown of his leaf and mast upon the verdure of June. Everywhere a second spring puts forth between summer gone and winter nearing. It is the overflow of plenty beyond the filling of the barns. ”

“ They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd. ”

“ This was the first week of harvest, and the first of August. How wonderfully the seasons are localised and subdivided. How diversified is the economy of light and heat! That field of wheat, thick, tall and ripe for the sickle, was green and apparently growing through all the months of last winter. What a phenomenon it would have been, on the first of February last, to a New England farmer, suddenly transported from his snow-buried hills to the view of this landscape the same day! Not a spire of grass or grain was alive when he left his own homestead. ”

“ In August, thanks to the Heaven-sent gulls, they were able to celebrate with a feast their first “Harvest Home.” In the centre of the big stockade a bowery was built, and under its shade tables were spread and richly laden with the first fruits their labours had won from the desert,—white bread and golden butter, green corn, watermelons, and many varieties of vegetables. Hoisted on poles for exhibition were immense sheaves of wheat, rye, barley, and oats, coaxed from the arid level with the water they had cunningly spread upon it. ”

“ Here and there we pass on the road a busy harvest scene, the people turning round at the sound of approaching wheels to watch the travellers pass. It is the farmer himself that gazes at us, half amused; the time for harvest is short on these rainy hills, and so master and man, and every available help, work early and late to get in the crops. The sun that shines so brilliantly to-day, and lights up the harvest field with a golden glow, will disappear in a few hours, and the fields may be a wreck from the wind and rain. ”