When I was a kid we spent many of our school holidays on a farm in rural Lincolnshine (UK). After a busy summer helping my grandparents harvest the crops, I couldn't wait for the next school holiday so I could return for The Harvest Festival. This important annual festival is tied to the seasons, and dates back to the pagan times in Britain.
Once the last of the crops has been harvested, farming communities give thanks for the bounty of crops and food from the land, and attend a harvest festival at the local church to celebrate a successful growing season.
It's typically celebrated on the Sunday nearest the harvest moon, and occurs close to the autumn equinox at the end of September or beginning of October. It's the closest festival to the US Thanksgiving, but has many of the same elements.
Traditionally the last sheath of the harvest was used to make a symbolic corn dolly that was created to ensure the continuation of the good crop the following year. The Saxons (5th to the 11th centuries) believed that this last sheath contained the Corn Spirit, and they would harvest around it until it was the last one standing, and it would be dried and woven into a dolly.
Different rural areas around the country would weave different symbols out of the corn, and this tradition continues to this day.
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| Corn Dolly Ear-rings |
We Plough the Fields
One hymn that is always sung around Harvest Time is We Plough the Fields and Scatter. It brings back such wonderful childhood memories of this time of year, and reminds me of my Mum. I used it as a basis for one of my poems that honours her battle with Alzheimer's during the time she was losing her ability to speak.
We plough the fields as wordsmiths scatter letters on the land.
You hope to grow a sentence up that isn’t weak or bland.
Watering your Ps and Qs coaxing them to sprout.
Grow gentle words to whisper or raise your voice to shout.
The barren earth dry in the sun a runway for the birds.
They peck at all the seedlings that never will be heard.
If they fly away up high and soar upon their wing,
We’ll never hear the song they stole or words you failed to sing.
About Jay Artale
Jay Artale abandoned her corporate career to become a digital nomad and full-time writer. She’s an avid blogger, podcaster, and nonfiction author helping travel writers and travel bloggers achieve their self-publishing goals. She shares tips, advice, and inspiration to writers with an independent spirit at her website Birds of a Feather Press, and documents her travels and artistic endeavours at her blog Roving Jay. Follow her on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
3 comments:
Hi Jay, I loved learning about the Harvest Festival. Beautiful and interesting!
Your poem brought tears to my eyes. Painful but precious memories of my own mother's struggle. Thank you!
Hi Jay, I do remember learning about Harvest Festivals from several sources. Love that you have memories of those traditions.
Thank you again for sharing your poetry with us. One of my best friends may still have language and be able to speak but she is a ghost of her former self. Our conversations are simple and often repetitive but she so delights in my calls and I delight in remembering the many adventures we shared even though she doesn't anymore.
What a beautiful re-wording of the hymn. Though it reflects your mother's struggle, for me it also speaks to the circle of life. Though those words may have been taken from your mother and others with Alzheimers, they are still there to be said by others.
I believe you are one of the others. With your beautiful poetry and your remembrance of your mother you are able to take those seeds the birds may drop even far away and refashion them into something alive. Just as birds are a part of reseeding forests, here metaphorically you are a part of reseeding words from your mother and anyone else you have had the pleasure of knowing well.
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