and some in smocks; but all with flaunting gay ribbons and dancing wheat-ears in their hats. Most of them were staggering drunk; and they burst into yard or kitchen, wanting to kiss the maids, or get hold of the beer-jug, and demanding money. While they were thus intruding by twos and threes, into half-a-dozen houses, the main company in the street hollaed for “largesse;” and a fearful cry it was. They joined hands in a circle, threw up their arms, threw back their heads, and set up the cry. It was bad enough when children were safe at home: but the horror of meeting harvest-men in a walk was extreme. Nursemaids and mammas turned down any lane, collected the little ones behind any hedge, escaped to any wood or into anybody’s shop or kitchen, at the first sight of gay ribbons, or sound of a tipsy voice, far away on the road. The end was that the silly fellows were lying about drunk for some days and nights, and came forth from the festival sick and peevish, and poorer than before they levied the largesse from frightened neighbours.
We hear allegations and regrets sometimes that the new Harvest-Homes in Worcestershire, Norfolk and other counties, are failures. We are told that the people accept readily enough the dinner or tea and supper offered by the gentry; but that the men will have their own drinking-bouts afterwards, all the same. How far this is true I do not know: but I am sure that nothing like this modern festival could have been shown formerly. The folk could have gone to church in the morning, and eaten their dinner at a long table, and tried to play, and pulled forelocks and bobbed curtseys at the close: but the speaking would have been different; and so would the hearers’ countenances.
One cannot say much yet for the quality of the play at a rural festival. Some Assistant-Commissioners observe, in their Education Reports, on the silly and helpless character of the amusements in rural play-grounds and at fairs: and most of us must have been struck with the same thing. It is like Quakers trying to sing, or the dancing of the Shakers of Lebanon. The children pull each other about, or stand jumping, or loll on a gate: and their fathers at the fair pull each other about, and hop about, or lounge against the wall. But, at these new Harvest-Homes, there is at least an intention to play at something; and there seems to be some ground for hope that our ancient ball-plays may come in again. Where good schools are opened, the children learn to play; and they will carry forward their sports and the love of them into their youth and manhood, with inestimable advantage to their health and personal bearing, as well as to their intelligence and their tempers. If they were drilled, and taught the arts of defence, so that every one’s right arm might keep his own head, it would be a blessed thing for the country, and a turning-point in the social history of the class. But, not looking so far forward at this moment, we may be thankful that we already see the harvest-men seated, with wives and children, at a good dinner in a tent, or on a terrace, instead of stumbling drunk about the streets while their wives are wretched at home. We may be thankful to hear the chorus of “God Save the Queen,” however rudely sung, in the twilight of a happy day, rather than the barbaric “Holla-largesse!” screeched by tipsy clowns.
With this new method of keeping Harvest-Home is united, in some districts, the abolition of mop-hiring. It is enough to observe that the new plan of registration of employers and servants seems to hold its ground, and to be extending in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, where the evils of mop-hiring have been most severely felt. For years to come there will be rough and rude servants of both sexes, who will cling to the pleasures of the statute-fair: but if a generation is growing up which is sensible of the respectability of a sincere and careful bargain for labour and wages, formed at an appropriate office, under conditions of mutual knowledge, the preference of mop-hiring will soon be a taste to be ashamed of. Lads and lasses have looked upon an annual change of place as a sort of “My Lady’s Toilet,” which had some fun in it: but this child’s play has been very ruinous at once to fortune and character. If fun is wanted, let us have an extra holiday: but let it be a real holiday, and not a spectacle of men and women standing in rows to be inspected and cheapened, like beasts at a cattle-sale, or negroes in a slave-market. At one tea-party (in lieu of the local mop), this autumn, I see that the amusement was dancing, under the encouragement of the clergyman. This is good, as far as it goes; and the next thing to be wished is, that neighbours knew how to dance,—could set about it as about a game, with a purpose and on a plan. Perhaps, when our rural labourers have learned to walk with the proper muscles, and hold themselves upright by means of drill, they may dance as the French, German, and Italian peasantry do,—knowing what they are about, and enjoying the true pleasure of the dance, as a graceful game, played to music. Meantime, any dance is a great improvement on the debauch which closes a mop-hiring.
Next, we have the shows of flowers, vegetables, and fruits, in which the most interesting share is borne by labourers who have gardens and allotments. If these shows, now so common, had been foretold in the days of the old poor-law, when the labourers had weekly loaves in proportion to the number of their children, and part of their low wages paid out of the rates, it would have been considered a prophecy of a rise in rank and fortune,—as it truly is.
In many English counties, we now see at the shows, splendid turnips and vegetable marrows, prodigious gooseberries, and plums, and tempting apples, and gay arrays of cut-flowers; and if we accompany the exhibitors home, we find a noble pig, fed from the garden refuse, and may encounter in the allotment field some costly agricultural machine, which the allotment holders have clubbed the means of hiring for as many days as will serve them all. Such a spectacle recalls the time, still within living memory, when labourers met in riot to break threshing machines, and make war against steam; and when midnight conspiracy startled the moonless nights with the glare of burning stacks.
