I have spent some time researching literary links to the first harvest. The most obvious and accessible is Brian Friel's play 'Dancing at Lughnasa'.
Dancing at Lughnasa is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel set in Ireland's County Donegal in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg. It is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator. He recounts the summer in his aunts' cottage when he was seven years old.
This play is loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts who lived in the Glenties, on the west coast of Donegal. Set in 1936, during the summer before de Valera's new constitution was approved by referendum, the play depicts the late summer days when love briefly seems possible for three of the Mundy sisters (Chris, Rose, and Kate) and the family welcomes home the frail elder brother, who has returned from a life as missionary in Africa. However, as the summer ends, the family foresees the sadness and economic privations under which they will suffer as all hopes fade.
The play takes place in early August, around the festival of Lughnasa, in Celtic folklore , the festival of the first fruits, when the harvest is welcomed. The play describes a bitter harvest for the Mundy sisters, a time of reaping what has been sown. Wikipedia
Other references include Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles with a reference to Tess as dancing at the local 'Cerealia' a custom only upheld by the 'women's club' of Marlott and described as a 'votive sisterhood'!! obviously this links with Ceres, Roman goddess of Agriculture: ' Ceres was personified and celebrated by women in secret rituals at the festival of Ambarvalia, held during May. There was a temple to Ceres on the Aventine Hill in Rome and her official priest was called a flamen. Her primary festival was the Cerealia or Ludi Ceriales ("games of Ceres"), instituted in the 3rd century BC and held annually on April 12 to April 19. The worship of Ceres became particularly associated with the plebeian classes, who dominated the grain trade. Little is known about the rituals of Cerelean worship; one of the few customs which has been recorded was the peculiar practice of tying lighted brands to the tails of foxes which were then let loose in the Circus Maximus. There was also an October festival dedicated to her when women fasted and offered her the first grain of the harvest.' Wikipedia. She was mother of Proserpina and here we see again links with Tess as maiden descending into the underworld of The Chase and Alec D'Urbeville with its tragic results.
A final reference to this time of year and the notionof the earth mother or goddess can be found in Wordsworth's 'A Solitary Reaper'. Here he selects an ordinary Hebridean Highland lass as his muse and presents her affinity with her natural environment so that maiden, song and field are etched upon 'that inward eye' of the imagination long after he has passed and this tradition has also been lost.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands;
A voice so thrilling ne'er heard
In springtime from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the planitive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago;
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of today?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Solitary_Reaper
No comments:
Post a Comment