Così menare il giorno.
* * * * *
Lingua mortal non dice
Quel ch' io sentiva in seno.
The hunt for ballads led the way to the search for every sort of popular song, and with what zeal that search has since been prosecuted, the splendid results in the hands of the public now testify.
III.
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 Fête 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 fête 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:—