Harvest awakes the morning

I always think September is still summer, the end of summer, but still summer… This year summer seems just about gone! It’s cool, it’s wet, the air has got that damp chill to it, and although I haven’t yet smelt that musty lovely autumn smell yet, it’s surely just around the corner.

The name September comes from the Latin meaning seventh month, however in the old French Republican Calendar, when all the months were given new names, the first part of the month was Fructidor up to about the 22nd, and then it was Vendémiaire which was when the Republican calendar started – not January. Fructidor relates to fruitfulness, Vendémiaire is to do with the wine harvest, and all the months were given names to do with nature and agriculture.

Revolutionary France wasn’t the only country to have month names not derived from the Roman calendar; in Irish, Meán Fómhair which is September, means the middle of the harvest, and Deireadh Fómhair, October, means the end of harvest.

John Clare wrote about the harvest in his Shepherd’s Calendar – harvest is the first line of the September part of his wonderful poem:

Harvest awakes the morning still
And toils rude groups the valleys fill
Deserted is each cottage hearth
To all life save the crickets mirth
Each burring wheel their sabbath meets
Nor walks a gossip in the streets
The bench beneath its eldern bough
Lined oer with grass is empty now
Where blackbirds caged from out the sun
Could whistle while their mistress spun.
All haunt the thronged fields still to share
The harvests lingering bounty there
As yet no meddling boys resort
About the streets in idle sport
The butterflye enjoys his hour
And flirts unchaced from flower to flower
And humming bees that morning calls
From out the low huts mortar walls
Which passing boy no more controuls
Flye undisturbed about their holes
And sparrows in glad chirpings meet
Unpelted in the quiet street