Harvest Home (Ch. 21)

The harvest was an opportunity for a major end-of-season celebrations, a time for the village to come together and celebrate together. When the harvest work was done the Harvest Supper was celebrated, church harvest festivals not being invented until well into the Victorian period.  Beer, smoking, and more or less harmless pranks, usher out the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.  

Unsurprisingly too, the harvest was seen as a time of romance, an opportunity for intimacy between men and women who had worked together closely in the fields.

 

Before the ripened field the reapers stand
In fair array; each by the lass he loves

Thomson’s Seasons – ‘Autumn’

 

The bashful maid—sweet healths engaging flower 

Lingering behind—oer rake still blushing bends 

& when to take the horn fond swains implore 

With feign'd excuses its dislike pretends 

The Harvest Morning (lines 60-63)

However, throughout this period, fluctuating grain prices at times of poor harvest resulted in many families struggling to pay for their basic item of food, bread.  Perhaps one in ten families remained below the ‘breadline’ over the period, increasing to nearly two out of every five families in times of food shortage. 

 

O poverty! how basely you demean 

The imprisond worth your rigid fates confine 

The Harvest Morning (lines 51-2)

Harvest Home  - Arbour Chapbook No. 21 is  is available from me at £3.50 + £1.00 towards postage and packing (UK).  

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