Crying the Mare
The exact manner of performing the ceremony and the words used vary in different districts, the variations being mostly due to the fact that this custom has been blended together with another called Crying the mare (Irel. Chs. Shr. Hrt.). Indeed, many writers have been hereby led to confuse these two customs, which were originally quite distinct. Crying the mare was performed by the farm men who were first to finish harvest in the neighbourhood. It was a mode of triumphing over their neighbours by offering the services of an imaginary mare to help a laggard farmer. The men assembled in the stackyard, or on some strip of rising ground, and there divided themselves into two bands, and chanted in loud voices the following dialogue. First band: I have her, I have her, I have her. Second band: What hast thee? (Every sentence is repeated three times.) A mare. Whose is her? H. B.’s (naming their master whose corn is all cut). Where shall we send her? To C. D. (naming some neighbour whose corn is left standing, and who therefore may be supposed to need the loan of a mare). In parts of Shropshire it was customary, some sixty or seventy years ago, actually to send a horse, mounted by the head reaper.
The cart carrying home the last load was styled the Harvest-cart. It was often decked out with ash-boughs and garlands, whilst on it rode boys singing the traditional song appropriate to the occasion:
Mester ... ’es got ’is corn,
Well shorn, well mawn,
Never hulled ower, yet never stuck fast,
And ’is ’arvest-cart’s comin’ home at last.
Then came the harvest-home banquet, the churn-supper, mell-supper, or hockey (Hrt. e.An.), to which the labourers’ wives and children were also invited. When the feasting was over, and the usual harvest-songs had been sung, the rest of the evening was spent in dancing and general rustic merriment.
The day when the farm hands resumed the usual order of work, which would be paid for by the usual allowance of wages and drink, was known in parts of Shropshire by the name of Sorrowful Monday.
Terms relating to Agriculture