A brief glance must be taken at what may be called domestic
folk-poetry. In a remote past, rural people found delight or
consolation in singing the events of their obscure lives, or in
deputing other persons of their own station, but especially skilled
in the art, to sing them for them. Thus there were marriage-songs and
funeral-songs, labour-songs and songs for the culminating points of
the pastoral or agricultural year. It is beyond my present purpose to
speak of the vintage festivals, and of the literary consequences of
the cult of Dionysus. I will, instead, pause for a moment to consider
the ancient harvest-songs. Among the Greeks, particularly in Phrygia
and in Sicily, all harvest-songs bore the generic name of Lytierses,
and how they got it, gives an instructive instance of myth-facture.
Lytierses was the son of King Midas, and a king himself, but also a
mighty reaper, whose habit it was to indulge in trials of strength
with his companions, and with strangers who were passing by. He tied
the vanquished up in sheaves and beat them. One day he defied an
unknown stranger, who proved too strong for him, and by whom he was
slain. So died Lytierses, the reaper, and the first "Lytierses," or
harvest-song, was composed to console his father, King Midas, for his
loss.
Now, if we regard Lytierses as the typical agriculturist, and his
antagonist as the growth or vegetation genius, the fable seems to read
thus: Between man and Nature there is a continual struggle; man is
often victorious, but, if too presumptuous, a time comes when he must
yield. In harvest customs continued to this day, a struggle with or
for the last sheaf forms a common feature. The reapers of Western
France tie the sheaf, adorned with flowers, to a post driven strongly
into the ground, then they fetch the farmer and his wife and all the
farm folk to help in dragging it loose, and when the fastenings break,
it is borne off in triumph. So popular is this _Fete de la Gerbe_,
that, during the Chouan war, the leaders had to allow their peasant
soldiers to return to their villages to attend it, or they would have
deserted in a body. It may not be irrelevant to add that in Brittany
the great wrestling matches take place at the _fete_ of the "new
threshing floor," when all the neighbours are invited to unite in
preparing it for the corn. In North Germany, where the peasants still
believe that the last sheaf contains the growth-genius, they set it in
honour on the festive board, and serve it double portions of cake
and ale.[4] Thus appeased, it becomes a friend to the cultivator. The
harvest "man" or "tree" which used to be made by English reapers
at the end of the harvest, and presented to master and mistress,
obviously belonged to the same family.
We have one or two of the ancient Lytierses in what is most likely
very nearly their original and popular form. One, composed of
distiches telling the story of Midas' son, is preserved in a tragedy
by Sosibius, the Syracusian poet. The following, more general in
subject, I take from the tenth Idyl of Theocritus:--
Come now hearken awhile to the songs of the god Lytierses.
Demeter, granter of fruits, many sheaves vouchsafe to the cornfield,
Aye to be skilfully tilled, and reaped, and the harvest abundant.
Fasten the heaps, ye binders of sheaves, lest any one passing,
Call out, "worthless clowns, you earn no part of your wages."
Let every sheaf that the sickle has cut be turned to the north wind
Or to the west exposed, for so will the corn grow fatter.
Ye who of wheat are threshers, beware how ye slumber at mid-day,
Then is the chaff from the stalk of the wheat, most easily parted.
Reapers, to labour begin, as soon as the lark upriseth,
And when he sleeps, leave off, yet rest when the sun overpowers.
Blest, O youths, is the life of a frog, for he never is anxious
Who is to pour him his drink, for he always has plenty.
Better at once, O miserly steward, to boil our lentils;
Mind you don't cut your fingers in trying to chop them to atoms.
These are the songs for the toilers to sing in the heat of the harvest.
Most modern harvest songs manage, like that of Theocritus, to convey
some hint of thirst or hunger. "Be merry, O comrades!" sing the
girl reapers of Casteignano dei Greci, a Greek settlement in Terra
d'Otranto, "Be merry, and go not on your way so downcast; I saw things
you cannot see; I saw the housewife kneading dough, or preparing
macaroni; and she does it for us to eat, so that we may work like
lions at the harvest, and rejoice the heart of the husbandman." This
may be a statement of fact or a suggestion of what ought to be a fact.
Other songs, sung exclusively at the harvest, bear no outward sign of
connection with it; and the reason of their use on that occasion is
hopelessly lost.