tied round with meadow-flowers, if it be early in the summer; if later, the garland has the addition of apples, set round on pegs, fastened unto it. The whole number of dancers begin all at once in a large ring, a man and a woman, and dance round about the bush (so is this garland called) and the piper as long as they are able to hold out. They that hold out longest at the exercise win the cake and apples, and then the alewife's trade goes on.

CARTERS' INTERJECTIONS.

PERHAPS it will be thought no uninteresting article in this little code of Vulgar Antiquities to mention a well-known interjection used by the country people to their horses, when yoked to a cart, &c., Heit or Heck! I find this used in the days of Chaucer, in the Friar's Tale:

"They saw a cart that charged was with hay,
The which a carter drove forth on his way:
Depe was the way, for which the carte stode;
The carter smote and cryde as he were wode,

Heit Scot! Heit Brok! what spare ye for the stones?
The Fiend, quoth he, you fetch, body and bones!"

The name of Brok is still, too, in frequent use amongst farmers' draught oxen.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1799, lxix. 659, derives Woohe! the well-known exclamation to stop a team of horses, from the Latin. "The exclamation used by our waggoners when they wish, for any purpose, to stop their team (an exclamation which it is less difficult to speak than to write, although neither is a task of great facility), is probably a legacy bequeathed us by our Roman ancestors; precisely a translation of the ancient classical Ohe! an interjection strictly confined to bespeaking a pause-rendered by our lexicographers, Enough! Oh, enough!

'Ohe, jam satis est-Ohe, Libelle.'"

A learned friend, whose communications I have frequently had occasion to acknowledge in the course of this work, says: "The exclamation Geho, geho,' which carmen use to their horses, is probably of great antiquity. It is not peculiar to this country, as I have heard it used in France. In the story

of the milkmaid who kicked down her pail, and with it all her hopes of getting rich, as related in a very ancient collection of apologues, entitled Dialogus Creaturarum, printed at Gouda, in 1480, is the following passage: Et cum sic gloriaretur, et cogitaret cum quanta gloria duceretur ad illum virum super equum dicendo gio gio, cepit pede percutere terram quasi pungeret equum calcaribus.'

HARVEST HOME,

ALIAS MELL SUPPER, KERN OR CHURN SUPPER, OR
FEAST OF INGATHERING.

MACROBIUS tells us that, among the Heathens, the masters of families, when they had got in their harvest, were wont to feast with their servants who had laboured for them in tilling the ground. In exact conformity to this, it is common among Christians, when the fruits of the earth are gathered in and laid in their proper repositories, to provide a plentiful supper for the harvest-men and the servants of the family. At this entertainment all are, in the modern revolutionary idea of the word, perfectly equal. Here is no distinction of persons, but master and servant sit at the same table, converse freely together, and spend the remainder of the night in dancing, singing, &c., in the most easy familiarity.

Bourne thinks the original of both these customs is Jewish, and cites Hospinian, who tells us that the Heathens copied after this custom of the Jews, and at the end of the harvest offered up their first fruits to the gods.2 For the Jews rejoiced and feasted at the getting in of the harvest.

"Patres familiarum, et frugibus et fructibus jam coactis, passim cum servis vescerentur, cum quibus patientiam laboris in colendo rure toleraverant."-Macrob. Saturnal. Die prim. cap. 10. "Antiquitus consuetudo fuit apud Gentiles, quod hoc mense servi, pastores, et ancillæ quadam libertate fuerentur; et cum dominis suis dominarentur, et cum eis facerent festa et convivia, post collectas messes."-Durand. Rat. vi. c. 86.

2 "Et pro collectis frugibus Deo gratiæ agebantur. Quem morem Ethnici postea ab iis mutuati sunt."-Hospin. de Orig. Fest. Jud. Stukius Antiq. Conviv. p. 63. Theophylact mentions "Scenopegia, quod celebrant in gratiarum actionem propter convectas fruges in mense Septembri. Tunc enim gratias agebant Deo, convectis omnibus fructibus," &c Theoph. in 7 cap. Joan.

This festivity is undoubtedly of the most remote antiquity. That men in all nations where agriculture flourished should have expressed their joy on this occasion by some outward ceremonies has its foundation in the nature of things. Sowing is hope; reaping, fruition of the expected good. To the husbandman, whom the fear of wet, blights, &c., has harassed with great anxiety, the completion of his wishes could not fail of imparting an enviable feeling of delight. Festivity is but the reflex of inward joy, and it could hardly fail of being produced on this occasion, which is a temporary suspension of every care.

The respect shown to servants at this season seems to have sprung from a grateful sense of their good services. Everything depends at this juncture on their labour and despatch. Vacina, (or Vacuna, so called as it is said à vacando, the tutelar deity, as it were, of rest and ease,) among the ancients, was the name of the goddess to whom rustics sacrificed at the conclusion of harvest.

In Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the mcnth of August are the following lines:

"Grant, harvest-lord, more by a penny or two,
To call on his fellowes the better to doo :
Give gloves to thy reapers a larges to crie,
And daily to loiterers have a good eie."

On which is this note in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 100: "He that is the lord of harvest is generally some stayd, sober-working man, who understands all sorts of harvest-work. If he be of able body he commonly leads the swarth in reaping and mowing. It is customary to give gloves to reapers, especially where the wheat is thistly. As to crying a largess, they need not be reminded of it in these our days, whatever they were in our author's time." [The following curious. lines "Upon the Norfolk Largess," are taken from the Norfolk Drollery, 1673, pp. 73-4:

"We have a custom, no where else is known,

For here we reap, where nothing e'er was sown ;
Our harvest-men shall run ye cap and leg,
And leave their work at any time to beg.
They make a harvest of each passenger,
And therefore have they a lord-treasurer.

Here ye must pence, as well as prayrs bestow,
'Tis not enough to say 'God speed the plow.'
These ask as men that meant to make ye stand,
For they petition with their arms in hand;
And till ye give, or some good sign appears,
They listen to ye with their harvest-eares.
If nothing drops into the gaping purse,
Ye carry with ye, to be sure, a curse;
But if a largess come, they shout ye deaf,
Had you as many ears as a wheatsheaf:
Sometimes the hollow greater is by odds,
As when 'tis answer'd from the ivye tods.
Here all unite, and each his accent bears,
That were but now together by the eares.
And, which a contradiction doth imply,
Because they get a largess they must cry;
Cry with a pox! whoever of it hears,
May wish their tankard had no other tears:
Thus, in a word, our reapers now-a-days,

Reap in the field, and glean in the high-ways."]

Mr. Stevenson, in the Twelve Moneths, 1661, p. 37, speaking of August, thus glances at the customs of Harvest Home: "The furmenty-pot welcomes home the harvest-cart, and the garland of flowers crowns the captain of the reapers; the battle of the field is now stoutly fought. The pipe and the tabor are now busily set a-work; and the lad and the lass will have no lead on their heels. O'tis the merry time wherein honest neighbours make good cheer, and God is glorified in his blessings on the earth.' The following is in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 113:

"The Hock-cart, or Harvest-home to the Right Honourable Mildmay Earle of Westmorland.

"Come, sons of Summer, by whose toile
We are the lords of wine and oile,
By whose tough labour and rough hands,
We rip up first, then reap our lands,

Crown'd with the eares of corne, now come,
And to the pipe sing harvest home;
Come forth, my lord, and see the cart,
Drest up with all the country art.
See here a maukin, there a sheet
As spotlesse pure as it is sweet:
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
(Clad, all, in linnen, white as lillies,)

The harvest swaines and wenches bound
For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd.
About the cart, heare how the rout
Of rural younglings raise the shout;
Pressing before, some coming after,
Those with a shout, and these with laughter.
Some blesse the cart; some kiss the sheaves;
Some prank them up with oaken leaves :
Some crosse the fill-horse; some, with great
Devotion, stroak the home-borne wheat:
While other rusticks, less attent

To prayers than to merryment

Run after with their breeches rent.
Well, on, brave boyes, to your lord's hearth,
Glitt'ring with fire; where, for your mirth,
You shall see, first, the large and cheefe
Foundation of your feast, fat beefe:

With upper stories, mutton, veale,

And bacon (which makes fulle the meale),
With sev'rall dishes standing by,

And here a custard, there a pie,

And here all-tempting frumentie."

[The Suffolk peasantry use, amongst others, the following Harvest-home song:

"Here's a health to the barley-mow!

Here's a health to the man

Who very well can

Both harrow, and plough, and sow!

When it is well sown,

See it is well mown,

Both raked and gravelled clean,

And a barn to lay it in.

Here's a health to the man

Who very well can

Both thrash and fan it clean!"]

"the

Newton, in his Tryall of a Man's owne Selfe, 1602, p. 54, under Breaches of the Second Commandment, censures adorning with garlands, or presenting unto any image of any Saint, whom thou hast made speciall choice of to be thy patron and advocate, the firstlings of thy increase, as CORNE and GRAINE, and other oblations."

Moresin tells us that Popery, in imitation of this, brings home her chaplets of corn, which she suspends on poles; that offerings are made on the altars of her tutelar gods, while