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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The splitting up of the seasons persists to this day among the Germanic peoples; but a systematising of these small seasons is only found when they are referred to the Julian months. This point will be dealt with below, in chapter XI. The phenomenon is known to me from my own native district. The word höst, ‘autumn’, still persists there in the old literal sense of harvest, mowing, and indeed höhösten is particularly the hay-harvest. Hence the designation of the autumn season as höst is felt to be insufficiently accurate and the term is replaced by efterhöst, literally ‘after-harvest’, late autumn. Between summer and efterhöst appears the skyr (dialect for skörd), the harvest, as a fifth season; sometimes there is added a sixth season, sivinter, late winter. Little attention has been paid to this phenomenon, though it is common enough. The periods of the rural occupations in particular give rise to such terms. Any period of this nature is described by the old Swedish word and (ann), now obsolete except in dialects. For the other districts I add from the Dialect Dictionary of Rietz:—hobal, the period on the one hand between the tillage in spring and the hay-harvest, and on the other between the hay- and the corn-harvest, the former period being the greater, the latter the small hobal. Elsewhere the word has the form hovel, summer being divided into hoveln, mellan-anna and ann (which is here used pregnantly to mean harvest). Compounds with and are vår-, säs-, gödsel-, hö-, slått-, skår-, skyr- and sädes-and (periods of spring, sowing, manuring, hay, hay-harvest, harvest, corn). The North Frisians of Amrum and Föhr for instance mark events by the periods um julham (‘at Christmas’), um wosham (‘in early spring’), pluchleth (ploughing-time), meedarleth (hay-harvest), kaarskörd (corn-reaping). In Norway there are current as general time-indications:—fishing-time (fiskja), springtime (voarvinna or voaronn), ploughing-time (plogen or plogvinna), midsummer (haavoll or haaball), ‘between time’, i. e. between ploughing and hay-making, (mellonn), early summer (leggsumar), haymaking-time (høyvinna, høyonn, or slaatt), harvest-time (haustvinna or skurd), ‘shortest-days-time’ (skamtid)[325]. In Iceland, where the sheep-farming is the principal industry, we find:—Lamb-weaning time or Pen-tide, stekk-tid, in May; Parting-tide, fra-faerar, when the sheep are driven to the hills; Market-tide, kaup-tid, when all purchases for the year are made; Home-field hay-time and Out-field hay-time (July and August); Folding-tide, rettir (September), when the sheep are driven off the hill pastures into folds to be separated into flocks and marked. Again from wild birds and eider-ducks one calls the spring Egg-tide. The fisherman uses such seasons as ver-tid, Fishing-tide; of these there is a spring, an autumn, and a winter fishing-month. Flitting-days, fardagar, come in the spring, and skil-dagar in summer, when servants leave.[326] In the old German laws and elsewhere similar time-indications are common, e. g. at plough-time, at the second plough-time, at autumn-sowing, at harvest, at hay-making time, at hemp-gathering, after harvest and hay-making, at the bean-harvest, at plough-time, at the grape-harvest, at sowing-time, at harvest-time, fall of the leaves, sprouting of the leaves, oat-cutting or harvest[327]. In Anglo-Saxon a similar expression occurs in a law of King Vihtraed in the year 696, sexton dæge rugernes (rye-harvest). These periods are in themselves indefinite, they fail to achieve a definite length or quite fixed position in the year. Where they do so, this is due to the comparison with the Julian months, of which more later.