The Hock Cart, or Harvest Home.
Come sons of summer, by whose toile
We are the Lords of wine and oile;
By whose tough labours, and rough hands,
We rip up first, then reap our lands,
Crown’d with the eares of corne, now come,
And, to the pipe, sing harvest home.
Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart,
Drest up with all the country art.
See here a maukin, there a sheet
As spotlesse pure as it is sweet:
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
Clad, all, in linnen, white as lillies,
The harvest swaines and wenches bound
For joy, to see the hock-cart crown’d.
About the cart heare how the rout
Of rural younglings raise the shout;
Pressing before, some coming after,
Those with a shout, and these with laughter.
Some blesse the cart; some kisse the sheaves;
Some prank them up with oaken leaves:
Some crosse the fill-horse; some with great
Devotion stroak the home-borne wheat:
While other rusticks, lesse attent
To prayers than to merryment,
Run after with their breeches rent.
Well, on brave boyes, to your Lord’s hearth
Glitt’ring with fire, where, for your mirth,
You shall see first the large and cheefe
Foundation of your feast, fat beefe:
With upper stories, mutton, veale,
Add bacon, which makes full the meale;
With sev’rall dishes standing by,
As here a custard, there a pie,
And here all-tempting frumentie,
And for to make the merrie cheere
If smirking wine be wanting here,
There’s that which drowns all care, stout beere,
Which freely drink to your Lord’s health,
Than to the plough, the commonwealth;
Next to your flailes, your fanes, your fatts
Then to the maids with wheaten hats;
To the rough sickle, and the crookt sythe
Drink, frollick, boyes, till all be blythe,
Feed and grow fat, and as ye eat,
Be mindfull that the lab’ring neat,
As you, may have their full of meat;
And know, besides, ye must revoke
The patient oxe unto the yoke,
And all goe back unto the plough
And harrow, though they’re hang’d up now.
And, you must know, your Lord’s word’s true,
Feed him ye must, whose food fils you.
And that this pleasure is like raine,
Not sent ye for to drowne your paine.
But for to make it spring againe.
Herrick.
Hoacky is brought
Home with hallowin,
Boys with plumb-cake
The cart following.
Poor Robin, 1676.
Mr. Brand says, “the respect shown to servants at this season, seems to have sprung from a grateful sense of their good services. Every thing depends at this juncture on their labour and despatch. Vacina, (or Vacuna, so called as it is said à vacando, the tutelar deity, as it were, of rest and ease,) among the ancients, was the name of the goddess to whom rustics sacrificed at the conclusion of harvest. Moresin tells us, that popery, in imitation of this, brings home her chaplets of corn, which she suspends on poles, that offerings are made on the altars of her tutelar gods, while thanks are returned for the collected stores, and prayers are made for future ease and rest. Images too of straw or stubble, he adds, are wont to be carried about on this occasion; and that in England he himself saw the rustics bringing home in a cart, a figure made of corn, round which men and women were singing promiscuously, preceded by a drum or piper.”
The same collector acquaints us that Newton, in his “Tryall of a Man’s owne Selfe,” (12mo. London, 1602,) under breaches of the second commandment, censures “the adorning with garlands, or presenting unto any image of any saint whom thou hast made speciall choice of to be thy patron and advocate, the firstlings of thy increase, as corne and graine, and other oblations.”