Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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“All lessons of primary daily concern

You have learnt from the Birds, and continue to learn.

Your best benefactors, and early instructors,

We give you the warning of seasons returning.

When the Cranes are arranged, and muster afloat

In the middle air, with a creaking note,

Steering away to the Libyan sands,

Then careful farmers sow their lands;

The crazy vessel is hauled ashore,

The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar

Are all unshipped, and housed in store.

The shepherd is warned, by the Kite reappearing,

To muster his flock, and be ready for shearing.

You quit your old cloak at the Swallow’s behest,

In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest”[204].

Similar time-determinations from natural phenomena are still not entirely neglected by the modern peasant. In Bohuslän (W. Sweden) the sowing-time was at hand when the swallow had come, it was the right sowing-time when the juniper flowered. In northern Scania (S. Sweden) the barley was to be sown when the hawthorn was in bloom. Older people could not give their birthdays but only knew that they were born e. g. at the rye- or potato-harvest, when the cattle were first driven out to pasture (in the spring), etc. My father knew quite well that his birthday was the fifth of September, but when anyone asked him when he was born he would generally answer: ‘When they pick hops’. The Eskimos said that such and such a person was born when eggs were collected or seals caught[205]. From modern Palestine a bond is quoted in which a sum of money was to be paid when next the fakûs (a kind of cucumber) was ripe[206].