[695]. Grimm, Mythologies,⁴ pp. 1036 f. He notes the frequency of this shouting, leaping, and singing at the planting of crops. It all goes back, of course, to communal rites.
[696]. E. H. Meyer, Volkskunde, p. 225.
[697]. Grein-Wülker, Bibliothek, I. 312 ff. To describe the whole ceremony in this case as original, is highly absurd.
[698]. Zell, Ferienschriften, II. 118, 212; see Plin. Nat. Hist., XXVIII. 2: “qui fruges excantasset.” Standard works for the investigation of these relics of ancient cult are Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, 2 vols., 1875-1877; the same author’s Mythologische Forschungen, already quoted; Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, Hannover, 1878; and, pioneer of them all, Tylor’s admirable work on Primitive Culture. For children’s games, as last refuge of many of these rites, see F. M. Böhme, Deutsches Kinderlied u. Kinderspiel, Leipzig, 1897, which could be enlarged by a judicious use of Firmenich, Germaniens Völkerstimmen, in four volumes. Böhme says the Ringelreihen of these games are “uralte Reste chorischer Aufführungen bei den Jahres-und Gottesfesten unserer heidnischen Vorfahren,” and gives cases which support his statement. Processional songs of the old cult survive in the Ansingelieder, Umzugslieder, and so forth, of the children, now mainly begging-rimes like the wren-song in Ireland and England, parallel to the swallow-song in Rhodes. Again, children have games which imitate sounds and movements of labour; Böhme gives a few. See also G. F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, pp. 360 ff. Halliwell, of course, includes some of these in his nursery-rimes. See also W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, N. Y., 1883. These songs of the children would lead us too far a-field, and we shall cling to the scanty survivals of the songs and refrains of labour itself.
[699]. Grein-Wülker, I. 323 f., especially version C.
[700]. Cattle.
[701]. Halliwell, Nursery-Rhymes, p. 129.
[702]. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch., pp. 228 ff., J. Grimm, Kl. Schr., VII. 229, in a paper on the “Nothhalm,” with account of harvest rites.
[703]. This child of destiny, asleep on a sheaf of grain, is wafted to the kingless land in a boat,—the Lohengrin parallel. For all the enticing material see Grimm, Mythologie,⁴ III. 399 ff.; Müllenhoff, in Zeitschr. f. deutsch. Alth., VII. 410 ff., and in his Beowulf, pp. 5 ff., with strongly established probability that the myth celebrates the beginnings of agriculture among Germans by the North and Baltic seas.]
[704]. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch., pp. 15 ff. That the Greeks sang at reaping, as at planting (Smythe, Melic Poets, p. 498, girls sing a sowers’ song), is beyond question. See Mannhardt’s note and references, as above, p. 2. He remarks that the Lityerses song in Theocritus (Id. X.) is an imitation of a real Greek folksong of labour, not, however, of the original Lityerses. Mr. Lang notes the resemblance of this situation to the famous scene in Molière’s Misanthrope.