Radcliffe College, essentially a part of Harvard, dates from the beginning of systematic instruction of women by members of the Harvard faculty in 1879, the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women being formally organized in 1882. The present name was adopted in 1894 in honour of Ann Radcliffe, Lady Mowlson (ob. c. 1661), widow of Sir Thomas Mowlson, alderman and (1634) lord mayor of London, who in 1643 founded the first scholarship in Harvard College. From 1894 also dates the present official connexion of Radcliffe with Harvard. The requirements for admission and for degrees are the same as in Harvard (whose president countersigns all diplomas), and the president and fellows of Harvard control absolutely the administration of the college, although it has for immediate administration a separate government. Instruction is given by members of the university teaching force, who repeat in Radcliffe many of the Harvard courses. Many advanced courses in Harvard, and to a certain extent laboratory facilities, are directly accessible to Radcliffe students, and they have unrestricted access to the library.
The presidents of Harvard have been: Henry Dunster (1640-1654); Charles Chauncy (1654-1672); Leonard Hoar (1672-1675); Urian Oakes (1675-1681); John Rogers (1682-1684); Increase Mather (1685-1701); Charles Morton (vice-president) (1697-1698); Samuel Willard (1700-1707); John Leverett (1708-1724); Benjamin Wadsworth (1725-1737); Edward Holyoke (1737-1769); Samuel Locke (1770-1773); Samuel Langdon (1774-1780); Joseph Willard (1781-1804); Samuel Webber (1806-1810); John Thornton Kirkland (1810-1828); Josiah Quincy (1829-1845); Edward Everett (1846-1849); Jared Sparks (1849-1853); James Walker (1853-1860); Cornelius Conway Felton (1860-1862); Thomas Hill (1862-1868); Charles William Eliot (1869-1909); Abbott Lawrence Lowell (appointed 1909).
Authorities.—Benjamin Peirce, A History of Harvard University 1636-1775 (Boston, 1883); Josiah Quincy, A History of Harvard University (2 vols., Boston, 1840); Samuel A. Eliot, Harvard College and its Benefactors (Boston, 1848); H. C. Shelley, John Harvard and his Times (Boston, 1907); The Harvard Book (2 vols., Cambridge, 1874); G. Birkbeck Hill, Harvard College, by an Oxonian (New York, 1894); William R. Thayer, “History and Customs of Harvard University,” in Universities and their Sons, vol. i. (Boston, 1898); Official Guide to Harvard, and the various other publications of the university; also the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine (1892 sqq.).
[1] Affiliated with the university, but autonomous and independent, is the Andover Theological Seminary, which in 1908 removed from Andover to Cambridge.
[2] The requirements for admission as changed in 1908 are based on the “unit system”; satisfactory marks must be got in subjects aggregating 26 units, the unit being a measure of preparatory study. Of these 26 units, English (4 units), algebra (2), plane geometry (2), some science or sciences (2), history (2; either Greek and Roman, or American and English), a modern language (2; French and German) are prescribed; prospective candidates for the degree of A.B. are required to take examinations for 4 additional units in Greek or Latin, and for the other 8 points have large range of choice; and candidates for the degree of S.B. must take additional examinations in French or German (2 units) and have a similar freedom of choice in making up the remaining 10 units.
HARVEST (A.S. hærfest “autumn,” O.H. Ger. herbist, possibly through an old Teutonic root representing Lat. carpere, “to pluck”), the season of the ingathering of crops. Harvest has been a season of rejoicing from the remotest ages. The ancient Jews celebrated the Feast of Pentecost as their harvest festival, the wheat ripening earlier in Palestine. The Romans had their Cerealia or feasts in honour of Ceres. The Druids celebrated their harvest on the 1st of November. In pre-reformation England Lammas Day (Aug. 1st, O.S.) was observed at the beginning of the harvest festival, every member of the church presenting a loaf made of new wheat. Throughout the world harvest has always been the occasion for many queer customs which all have their origin in the animistic belief in the Corn-Spirit or Corn-Mother. This personification of the crops has left its impress upon the harvest customs of modern Europe. In west Russia, for example, the figure made out of the last sheaf of corn is called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapped up in it. The woman who binds this sheaf represents the “Cornmother,” and an elaborate simulation of childbirth takes place, the boy in the sheaf squalling like a new-born child, and being, on his liberation, wrapped in swaddling bands. Even in England vestiges of sympathetic magic can be detected. In Northumberland, where the harvest rejoicing takes place at the close of the reaping and not at the ingathering, as soon as the last sheaf is set on end the reapers shout that they have “got the kern.” An image formed of a wheatsheaf, and dressed in a white frock and coloured ribbons, is hoisted on a pole. This is the “kern-baby” or harvest-queen, and it is carried back in triumph with music and shouting and set up in a prominent place during the harvest supper. In Scotland the last sheaf if cut before Hallowmas is called the “maiden,” and the youngest girl in the harvest-field is given the privilege of cutting it. If the reaping finishes after Hallowmas the last corn cut is called the Cailleach (old woman). In some parts of Scotland this last sheaf is kept till Christmas morning and then divided among the cattle “to make them thrive all the year round,” or is kept till the first mare foals and is then given to her as her first food. Throughout the world, as J. G. Frazer shows, the semi-worship of the last sheaf is or has been the great feature of the harvest-home. Among harvest customs none is more interesting than harvest cries. The cry of the Egyptian reapers announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of Osiris, has found its echo on the world’s harvest-fields, and to this day, to take an English example, the Devonshire reapers utter cries of the same sort and go through a ceremony which in its main features is an exact counterpart of pagan worship. “After the wheat is cut they ‘cry the neck.’ ... An old man goes round to the shocks and picks out a bundle of the best ears be can find ... this bundle is called ‘the neck’; the harvest hands then stand round in a ring, the old man holding ‘the neck’ in the centre. At a signal from him they take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the ground. Then all together they utter in a prolonged cry ‘the neck!’ three times, raising themselves upright with their hats held above their heads. Then they change their cry to ‘Wee yen! way yen!’ or, as some report, ‘we haven!’” On a fine still autumn evening “crying the neck” has a wonderful effect at a distance. In East Anglia there still survives the custom known as “Hallering Largess.” The harvesters beg largess from passers, and when they have received money they shout thrice “Halloo, largess,” having first formed a circle, bowed their heads low crying “Hoo-Hoo-Hoo,” and then jerked their heads backwards and uttered a shrill shriek of “Ah! Ah!”
For a very full discussion of harvest customs see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Brand’s Antiquities of Great Britain (Hazlitt’s edit., 1905).