Plague Sunday - A Forgotten Harvest Festival

With variations around the county and country, the period including the last weekend in August and first in September is a time associated with ancient well-dressing that in the 17th century gained added significance in commemorating the appreciation of, relatively, uncontaminated water following the spread of the plague. This harvest period also included in many areas a Sabbath commemorated as Plague Sunday. In South Zeal there is an area of land on the outskirts of the populated area reputed to have been a burial ground used, of necessity to bury the dead and avoid taking bodies the short distance to the parish church in South Tawton. There can be little doubt then that South Zeal, on the main high way to London, succumbed to the killer disease and that its residents attempted to protect the rest of the parish with self-imposed isolation that made an extra burial ground a necessity. Did protected parishioners leave food on the village outskirts, collecting as payment coins which were left in water disinfected with vinegar as was the case in Eyam, in Derbyshire where by far the most illustrative of commemorations for the Plague is still maintained? Several of the original 'plague cottages' survive in Eyam, as does its well where the villagers' disinfected money was left. - now known as Mompesson's well in memory of the rector, William Mompesson, who sealed off the area to contain the plague.

Whom was it that sealed off South Zeal? Which of its cottages hold lingering memories of tragedy brought to the village as death stepped down from a stagecoach or carrier's waggon? When was a Plague Sunday last commemorated in the parish?

Fortunately, the harvest festival is still celebrated in this area, with a lunch in Belstone this year in October, but what is possibly the oldest British harvest legend is fleshed out in the widespread folk-song John Barleycorn.

Three men have a vendetta against the eponymous hero and swear that he must die. They bury John Barleycorn alive, and are then amazed to see his head resurface. After a while it grows a beard, a sign of adulthood. But just as he reaches full height, the men cut him down, bind him to a cart, strip off his flesh, and grind him between two stones. The final verses celebrate the second resurrection triumph, with John Barleycorn reappearing as wonderful beer. In this form JB gets a measure of revenge and proves 'the stronger man at last' by sentencing drinkers to an eternity of empty pockets and hangovers.

The gods and the god-like have cropped up in harvest tales from all ages and cultures. In Greek myth Persephone, daughter of the corn-spirit Ceres was whisked away by god of the Underworld Pluto. She had to spend half of every year with him, during which time the earth was barren: a myth that accounts for the seasons of the year.

Both Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt had harvesting ceremonies involving corn dollies and Last Sheaf rites, almost exactly the same as those being practised before the mechanisation of the harvest in Britain early this century.

Before automation cut a swathe through the season's traditions, each harvesting day was usually heralded by a bell-peal from the local church. It was said that Sunday bells should be rung three times over the ripened crop before it could be taken in. The days usually ran from 5.00a.m to.7.00p.m, the work and rest- periods being dictated by a foreman called the Lord of the Harvest, or King of the Mowers. His badge of office was a straw hat bedecked with poppies and bindweed.

The Lord up-ended any newcomer to the team and struck the soles of his boots with a stone. The novice was released from the mock-shoeing only after he put a shilling towards the mowers' beer. The long days of reaping usually lasted two or three weeks, concluding with the celebrations of Harvest Home.

On most farms, everyone had to muck in, hence the saying; 'In Harvest time lords are labourers'.

Some areas dragged in the local clergy to kick off the harvest. The priest would bless the crop; and sometimes the first sheaf was used to make sacramental bread - a Christian/pagan crossover, which still excites impressionable theologians.

Elsewhere, the clergy were not so welcome. It was common for the church to demand a tithe of one tenth of the crop; and it was equally common for the harvesters to try and thwart the tithe. One harvest chant runs:

We've cheated the Parson,

We'll cheat him again,

Why should the Vicar have one in ten?

While the tithe has become a distant memory the parlous state of church funding has revived the need for financial commitment from parishioners. Some will respond, many more might relish the continuing revival of ceremonials that once dominated the calendar.

• The Horn Dance, deer-based celebrations of previous millennia continue to attract attention on the Monday after September 4 th ;
• The Festival of First Fruits of mid-September;
• Rood Day Fairs or Holy Cross commemorations of September 14 th ;
• Horseman's Sunday, the third Sabbath of the month;
• Harvest Moon, the first full moon following the 21 st , celebrated to symbolise the fertile earth;
• Cheese Fairs and Sheep Fairs already active in other areas
• Blackberry Summer celebrations, to thwart the Devil who will poison the brambles by Michaelmas or spit on the fruit;

These and many other September celebrations offer opportunities for colour to be restored to community life, but are likely to be largely ignored.

© Roy & Ursula Radford