Battons-la joyeusement, ...
Beaurepaire heard, to be sure, here and there in Normandy; but it was no longer a refrain of labour, and was attached to a love-song.[[726]]
The main ceremony, of course, is at the end of harvest. In many places a custom still prevails, that when the last sheaf is to be cut, a portion of grain is left standing, and the reapers now dance about it with repeated cries, sometimes of vague mythological tradition like “Wold, Wold, Wold,” and with songs; now bare their heads, and pour food and drink upon the spot; now let the “bonniest lass” cut this remnant, dress it, and bring it home as the “corn-baby”; now throw their sickles at it to see who can cut it down;[[727]] and so on, in variety of form, but all to the same purpose. In Flanders they sing, when the last load is taken from the field,
Keriole, keriole, al in!
’t loaste voer goat in.
Keriole, Keriole, al in![[728]]
There is every reason to think that some rite of this sort, accompanied with communal refrain and song, was once universal in agricultural life.[[729]] The corn-baby just described as decked in silk and ribbons and brought home with singing, is also known as the kirn-baby, the ivy-girl, and the maiden; so that harvest-home is here and there called the maiden-feast.[[730]] The songs belong primarily on the field and with the homeward faring cart; but customs change. In Suffolk at harvest suppers some one is crowned with a pillow and the folk all sing I am the Duke of Norfolk,[[731]] though elsewhere in the country the old note remains. Still farther from the field, Hertfordshire countrymen sing The Barley Mow in alehouses after their day’s labour; but in another part of Suffolk this is a festal song chanted at the harvest-supper “when the stack, rick, or mow of barley is finished.” It is a song of repetitions, and holds an old refrain.[[732]] For this song at the harvest-home supper, its variations, corruptions, survivals, its refrains, and its choruses, one would need a book; a description or two of recent doings must suffice. “At the harvest suppers up to some twenty years ago,” say Broadwood and Maitland, “while the other guests were still seated at the table, a labourer carrying a jug or can of beer or cider filled a horn for every two men, one on each side of the table; as they drank, this old harvest-song was sung and the chorus repeated, until the man with the beer had reached the end of the long table, involving sometimes thirty repetitions of the first verse. After this, the second verse was sung in the same manner.” The chorus—from Wiltshire—ran thus:—
So drink, boys, drink, and see that you do not spill,
For if you do, you shall drink two, for ’tis our master’s will.
What is left here of communal song is the fact of the chorus and the infinite repetition; the song has a poor mixture of the bucolic with the buckish. The older collection of Dixon gives a better song:—