With the puffing snort, the whirr and smoke of the engine, came the downfall of the ancient ceremonies. If the corn is threshed in the field and carried away in sacks, there is no time for the triumph of Ceres, or the decking of "Necks."
The laborers are no longer "satisfied with the things themselves." They are keen for the shilling they will earn for overhour work, and in some counties prefer it to the gathering of master and men round the harvest board; and the drink makes them envious instead of merry.
Times are hard. The great iron rakes clear the fields and there are some farmers who no longer say with Boaz:
Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not, and let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.
It seems as though the old happy gleaning days were also numbered. Those days to which the villagers look forward from one year's end to another! The hour at which gleaning may begin is made known in some parishes by the church bell tolling at eight o'clock, after which the children troop off with their mothers to the wide fields. The sun may shine with fierce August fervor, the children's arms and the mothers' backs be weary to breaking, and the corn gathered be only enough for two half-peck loaves—yet there are charms in the long days in the fields, in the strawberries picked in the hedge, and the potato pasties eaten under the rick, and when the church bell tolls again at nine o'clock there are still many lingerers in the fields.
The world is growing grave and old, and it is sad to think that many of the simple old-fashioned enjoyments of past years are fading away. Still there is another side to the inevitable law of change; for out of the relics of the worship of Ceres, out of the ashes of the ancient customs of revelry, a phœnix has arisen, grand and hope-inspiring, and that carries back our memories to days before the Romans were conquerors of the world, and when the most ancient of all nations, the Jews, used to celebrate their yearly feast of Ingathering.
When first Harvest Festivals in Churches were proposed they were looked on with suspicion, for somewhat similar services had been swept away by the iron hand of the Reformation. But thankful hearts and good common-sense have worn out the suspicion, and the day comes now in each year, when every Church in England is decked with sheaves of corn, grapes, torch lilies, dahlias, sunflowers, and all the splendors of autumn, and when glorious Te Deums, and hearty Harvest Hymns rise in thanksgiving for the blessings on the fields.
Once more the ancient cry of "Largess" is, as it were, revived. But now it is largess for the poor, beloved by God, it is largess for the suffering ones, who watch in pain, it is largess for home and foreign missions, that all may be safely gathered in to the great final Harvest.
It is also customary for a Festival to be held in the Cathedrals of the principal county towns. And there are few nobler sights than to see the Nave of one of these magnificent old buildings, on a market day, so full of men and women of every position in life, that they are sitting on the bases of the pillars, and standing in the aisles; and there are few nobler sounds than to hear that mighty congregation burst into singing:
Come, ye thankful people, come!
Raise the song of Harvest Home!