In the Statistical Account of Scotland, 1797, xix. 550, Parish of Longforgan, Perth, we read: "It was, till very lately, the custom to give what was called a Maiden Feast, upon the finishing of the harvest; and to prepare for which, the last handful of corn reaped in the field was called the Maiden. This was generally contrived to fall into the hands of one of the finest girls in the field, was dressed up with ribands, and brought home in triumph, with the music of fiddles or bagpipes. A good dinner was given to the whole band, and the evening spent in joviality and dancing, while the fortunate lass who took the Maiden was the queen of the feast; after which this handful of corn was dressed out, generally in the form of a cross, and hung up with the date of the year, in some conspicuous part of the house. This custom is now entirely done away, and in its room each shearer is given 6d. and a loaf of bread. However, some farmers, when all their corns are brought in, give their servants a dinner and a jovial evening, by way of Harvest Home.”

Thomson, in his Seasons, has left us a beautiful description of the annual festivity of Harvest Home. His words are these: -The harvest treasures all

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Now gather'd in, beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain; the circling fence shut up;
And instant Winter's utmost rage defy'd,
While, loose to festive joy, the country round

Laughs with the loud sincerity of mirth,

Shook to the wind their cares. The toil-strung youth,
By the quick sense of music taught alone,
Leaps wildly graceful in the lively dance.
Her ev'ry charm abroad, the village toast,
Young, buxom, warm, in native beauty rich,
Darts not unmeaning looks; and where her eye
Points an approving smile, with double force
The cudgel rattles, and the wrestler twines.
Age too shines out; and, garrulous, recounts

The feats of youth. Thus they rejoice; nor think
That, with to-morrow's sun, their annual toil
Begins again the never-ceasing round."

In Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of August, in addition to the lines already quoted, are the following, alluding to this festivity:

"In harvest time, harvest folke, servants and all,
Should make, alltogither, good cheere in the hall,

And fill out the black bol of bleith to their song,

And let them be merrie al harvest time long.

Once ended thy harvest, let none be begilde,

Please such as did please thee, man, woman, and child.
Thus doing, with alway suche helpe as they can,

Thou winnest the praise of the labouring man."

:

On which is this note in Tusser Redivivus, p. 104: "This, the poor labourer thinks, crowns all a good supper must be provided, and every one that did anything towards the inning must now have some reward, as ribbons, laces, rows of pins to boys and girls, if never so small, for their encouragement; and, to be sure, plum-pudding. The men must now have some better than best drink, which, with a little tobacco, and their screaming for their largesses, their business will soon be done.' In another part of Tusser's work, under "The Ploughman's Feast Days," are these lines:

"For all this good feasting, yet art thou not loose,

Til Ploughman thou givest his Harvest Home goose;
Though goose go in stubble, I passe not for that,
Let Goose have a goose, be she lean, be she fat."

On which Tusser Redivivus remarks, p. 81,
feited if they overthrow during harvest."

The goose is for

In the Abbé de Marolle's Memoirs, in the description of the state of France under Henry IV., we find the following account of Harvest Home: "After the harvest, the peasants fixed upon some holiday to meet together and have a little regale (by them called the Harvest Gosling); to which they invited not only each other, but even their masters, who pleased them very much when they condescended to partake of it." (Anecdotes of some distinguished Persons, 1795, iii. 198.) In Cornwall, it should seem, they have "Harvest Dinners;' and these, too, not given immediately at the end of the harvest. "The harvest dinners," says Carew, in his Survey, f. 68, are held by every wealthy man, or, as wee term it, every good liver, betweene Michaelmas and Candlemas, whereto he inviteth his next neighbours and kinred; and, though it beare onely the name of a dinner, yet the ghests take their supper also with them, and consume a great part of the night after in Christmas rule. Neither doth the good cheere wholly expire (though it somewhat decrease) but with the end of the weeke."

The country people in Warwickshire, according to Steevens, use a sport at their Harvest Home, where one sits as a judge, to try misdemeanors committed in harvest, and the punishment of the men is, to be laid on a bench and slapped on the breech with a pair of boots. This they call giving them the boots.

Formerly, it should seem, there was a Harvest Home Song. Bishop Kennett, in the Glossary to his Parochial Antiquities, v. Dytenum, tells us: "Homines de Hedyngton ad curiam Domini singulis annis inter festum S. Michaelis et festum S. Martini venient cum toto et pleno Dyteno, sicut hactenus consueverunt." This, he adds, is singing harvest home. Dr. Johnson tell us, in his Tour to the Hebrides, that he saw the harvest of a small field in one of the Western Islands. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest song, in which all their voices were united. They accompany, in the Highlands, every action which can be done in equal time with an appropriated strain, which has, they say, not much meaning, but its effects are regularity and cheerfulness. The ancient proceleusmatic song, by which the rowers of galleys were animated, may be supposed to have been of this kind. There is now an Oar Song used by the Hebridians. Thus far the learned traveller. I have often observed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (and I suppose it is the same in other sea-port towns) that the sailors, in heaving their anchors, made use of a similar kind of song. In ploughing with oxen in Devonshire, I observed a song of the same kind.

In the Statistical Account of Scotland, xix. 384, Bandothy, co. Perth, it is said: "There is one family on the CuparGrange estate, which has been there a century. The former tenant in that family kept a piper, to play to his shearers all the time of harvest, and gave him his harvest-fee. The slowest shearer had always the drone behind him.”

In the Life of Eugene Aram, 2d edit. p. 71, there is an essay on "the Mell-supper,' and shouting the Churn," by that

I once thought that the Northern name of the entertainment given on this occasion, i. e. MELL-SUPPER, was derived from the French word mesler, to mingle or mix together, the master and servant sitting promiscuously at the same table; but some, to whose opinion I pay great deference, would rather deduce it from the Teutonic word mehl, farina, or meal. It has been also suggested to me, that it might come from the Med-syp., i. e. the Reward Supper. All being upon an equal footing, or,

unhappy but very extraordinary man. In this he supposes these feasts to be the relics of Pagan ceremonies, or Judaism, and to be of far higher antiquity than is generally apprehended, as old as a sense of joy for the benefit of plentiful harvest, and human gratitude to the Creator for his munificence to men. In England, he adds, we hear of it under various names in different counties, as Mell-supper, Churnsupper, Harvest-supper, Harvest-home, Feast of Ingathering, &c.

To prove that the Jews celebrated the Feast of Harvest, he cites Exodus xxiii. 16, and Leviticus xxiii. 39, and refers to Callimachus's Hymn to Apollo to show that the Heathens misapplied through ignorance the acknowledgment of this festivity, and directed it to a secondary, not the primary fountain of this benefit, i. e. Apollo, or the Sun. Bread, or cakes, he says, composed part of the Hebrew offering, as appears by Leviticus xxiii. 13; and we gather from Homer, in the first book of his Iliad, that a cake thrown upon the head of the victim was also part of the Greek offering to Apollo. Apollo, continues Aram, losing his divinity on the progress of Christianity, what had been anciently offered to God the reapers as prudently eat up themselves. At last the use of the meal of new corn was neglected, and the supper, so far as meal was concerned, was made indifferently of old or new corn, as was most agreeable to the founder. He derived MELL, either from meal, or else from the instrument called with us a mell, wherewith corn was anciently reduced to meal in a mortar. He adds, as the harvest was last concluded with several preparations of meal, or brought to be ready for the mell, this term became, in a translated signification, to mean the last of other

as the Northern vulgar idiom has it, "Hail fellow well met." Amell, in the North, also is commonly used for betwixt, or among. I find, indeed, that many of our Northumbrian rustic or vulgar words are derived to us from the French. Perhaps we have not imported them from the first market, but have had them at second-hand from the Scots, a people who in former times were greatly connected with that nation. In a letter dated Aug. 12, 1786, by Samuel Pegge, he says: "The most obvious interpretation of the term Mell-supper, seems to insinuate that it is the Meal-supper, from the Teutonic word mehl (farina)." In another letter, dated Aug. 28, 1786, he cites Cowel's Interpreter, in v. Med-syp. i. e. the Reward Supper, as thinking it may also be deduced from that. The Rev. Mr. Drake, Vicar of Isleworth, supposes it means the Meal-supper, by way of eminence.

things; as when a horse comes last in the race, they often say in the North, he has got the mell. [On the completion of the reaping in Durham, they sing

"Bless'd be the day that Christ was born,

We've gotten mell of * * * * corn,
Weel bound and better shorn,

Hip! hip! huzza!"

This "Harvest-home Call" is the one generally made use of in the county of Devon :

"We have ploughed, we have sowed,
We have reaped, we have mowed,
We have brought home every load,
Hip! hip! hip! harvest-home!"

And the following is another provincial specimen :

There was also a churn-supper, or more properly a kernsupper (so they pronounce it vulgarly in Northumberland), and a shouting in the church, or kern. This, Aram informs

In so great a variety of conjectures concerning the true etymon of Mell-supper, it will not be the less dangerous to hazard another. There is an old word for a contest, i. e. melle, which the Glossary to Gawin Douglas derives from the French mellee, Lat. inf. æt. melleia et melletum, i. e. certamen. Now, it is well known, that when a set of reapers are drawing near to a conclusion, the parties upon different ridges have frequently a very sharp contest which shall be first done. This contest is mentioned in the above glossary, under the name of Kemping, which is explained "the contending of shearers or reapers in harvest." The following is from Hutchinson's Durham, ii. 583, Parish of Easington: "In this part of the country are retained some ancient customs, evidently derived from the Romans, particularly that of dressing up a figure of Ceres, during harvest, which is placed in the field while the reapers are labouring, and brought home on the last evening of reaping, with music and great acclamation. After this a feast is made, called the Mell-supper, from the ancient sacrifice of mingling the new meal." Dr. Jamieson, in his EtymoLogical Dictionary of the Scottish Language, v. MELL, says: "MELL, &

a company." "A dozen or twenty men will sometimes go in and stand abreast in the stream, at this kind of fishing, called heaving or hauling, up to the middle, in strong running water, for three or four hours together: a company of this kind is called a Mell." P. Dornock, Dumfr. Statist.

Acc. ii. 16.