Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/286

280 to fetch South-running water, with a strict injunction not to salute any either going or comming, no not their dearest friends, if they should chance to meete them (as by chance they did).” (Ibid., c. xix, p. 179.) It is not stated to what use the water, when fetched, was to be put.

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Old Harvest Customs in Devon and Cornwall.—(Extract from a Letter written August 27, 1839, from Truro). “Now, when all the corn was cut at Heligan, the farming men and maidens come in front of the house, and bring with them a small sheaf of corn, the last that has been cut, and this is adorned with ribbons and flowers, and one part is tied quite tight, so as to look like a neck. Then they cry out as loud as they can; then the dairy maid gives the neck to the head farming-man. He takes it, and says, very loudly three times, ‘I have him, I have him, I have him.’ Then another farming-man shouts very loudly, ‘What have ye? what have ye? what have ye?’ Then the first says, ‘A neck, a neck, a neck.’ And when he has said this, all the people make a very great shouting. This they do three times, and after one famous shout go away and eat supper, and dance, and sing songs.” The custom passed away with the introduction of machines.

.—All went out to the field when the last corn was cut, the “neck” was tied with ribbons and plaited, and they danced round it, and carried it to the great kitchen, where by-and-bye the supper was. The words were as given in the previous account, and “Hip, hip, hack, heck, I have ’ee, I have ’ee, I have ’ee.” It was hung up in the hall.

Another account, with few details only, recounts that one of the men rushed from the field with the last sheaf, the others following with vessels of water, which they endeavoured to throw upon the sheaf before it could be taken into the barn; the moral being the difficulties encountered by the farmer in saving his corn from rain, etc.

At Kingsbridge, the following was formerly recited or sung (at the end of the harvest): “We’ve a ploughed, and we’ve a sowed, we’ve a reaped, and we’ve a mowed, we’ve a sheaved, and we’ve a bound, and well a stood upon the ground.” At the end was “Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!”