Quaint customs, dating from ancient times, still mark the celebration of the gathering of the harvest, which also was a time of Thanksgiving as it is today. In ancient Egypt, where the welfare of man depended on the double aspect of corn -- that of the young green blades promising the new supplies of food, and that of the ripened grain, which not only gives that food but supplies the means for the next-crop -- it will readily be seen why many of the legends and harvest customs depict two personalities.
For example, Osiris, the golden god of ripe grain, dies, is scattered and is sought by Isis, his wife, in her dual capacity of goddess of the Nile (whose waters brought the harvest), and the Green Goddess, that is, the young growing corn. Again, there is Demeter the Mother, or ripe corn, seeking and finding her young daughter Persephone, the springing corn.
In Silesia and in southern Saxony the spirits of the harvest are represented either by an Oats-bride and an Oats-bridegroom or by a Wheat- bride and a Wheat-bridegroom. There is a wedding procession in which the "bride" and "bridegroom" are taken round the village in a decorated wagon drawn by oxen. The usual dances and songs follow.
In Germany a Corn-Mother is believed to sit on guard in the cornfields and the peasants are forbidden to pick the poppies or cornflowers lest she catch them. She is believed to be present in the last handful of corn left standing at harvesttime, and when this is cut down she is supposed to be driven out or killed. All kinds of superstitions are extant which declare that the girl who gathers the last of the corn will be wed within the year, or if a married woman picks it that she will bear a child before the next harvest.
There are many instances of the last bunch being made into a corn-queen, or a corn-doll, a corn-mother, or an old corn-woman -- it being decorated and sometimes carried to the church and treated with special reverence, and songs are sung while the reapers dance round it, entreating the corn-spirit to give them a bounteous harvest the following year. In the Island of Islay the corn-woman is hung up on the farmer's wall till the following sowing-time, when she is taken down, pulled to pieces, and the grain given to the horses to eat to ensure a lucky harvest.
In Slavonic countries, in France and also in Germany, there is another series of folk-tales
which regard the corn-spirit as an animal, and it is variously alluded to as a wolf, a dog, a cat, a hare, a goat, a sow, or an ox; in some districts even as a cock. They are quaint rather, than beautiful or poetic, and again one finds that penalties or good fortune attend, the man or woman who cuts the last standing ears of grain.
In former times, after reapers had done their work they were accustomed to meet at some
barn or inn and make merry with ale and cake. The feast had several names, such as Mell supper, Churn supper, Harvest supper and Feast of Ingathering.
In countries where rice is the staple food, a Mother of Rice is the object of veneration, and one finds there in actual practice the ceremonies for propitiating her such as must have once held away among the present more advanced countries."
The Malays; Burmese and Dyaks are typical examples of these primitive folk. They believe that the race is animated by a soul, and treat it with the solicitude due to the more honored among themselves. The young rice is fed with rice-pap as though the rice-ears were infants, and, according to a writer in "Great Thoughts," "none may fire a gun or make loud noises near the field when the rice is in bloom, for then it should not be startled, lest the soul of the rice be killed and the harvest be lost."
Even the reaper's knives are of a peculiar kind that can be hidden in the hand so that the
rice-spirit is not startled when cut down.
This story appeared in The Zanesville Signal on November 20, 1927 under the title "Where the Harvest Time Is Still Celebrated by Curious Customs."
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