Beer has always been _the_ drink in the harvest field.
Beneath some shelt’ring heap of yellow corn Rests the hoop’d keg, and friendly cooling horn, That mocks alike the goblet’s brittle frame, It’s costlier potions, and its nobler name. To Mary first the brimming draught is given, By toil made welcome as the dews of heaven, And never lip that press’d its homely edge, Had kinder blessings or a heartier pledge.
[57] To lase or lease, provincial term for “to glean.”
In most parts of England the grain last cut was brought home in the Hock Cart or Horkey Cart. The name “Horkey,” is probably a corruption of “Hock,” and is equivalent to the German _hoch_, the allusion being to the wain piled _high_ with sheaves. The cart decked with ribbons and surmounted with a sheaf dressed up to represent a woman—perhaps Ceres, goddess of the harvest; the horses pranked out in gay trappings; a crowd of labourers and all the youthful inhabitants of the village hurrahing in the wake presented such a scene as that described by Herrick in his poem of the _Hock Cart_:—
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 ears 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. { 255} See here a maukin, there a sheet As spotless pure as it is sweet; The horses, mares, and frisking fillies, Clad all in linen 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 cross 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.
A verse was sung to start the hock-cart on its way; generally some thing of this kind:—
Harvest home, harvest home, We have ploughed, we have sowed; We have reaped, we have mowed, We have brought home every load, Hip, hip, hip, harvest home!