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.The fairy wife who came out of thelake in the popular tale from Llyn y Fan Fach in Carmarthenshire in Wales(Wood 1992) brought with her a wonderful herd of cows (see p.31).Whenher husband broke the contract made at their marriage, she returned to the66 Mistress of the Grain lake and summoned her cattle to follow her, calling various animals by name.In the version quoted by Sir John Rhys, she also summoned four grey oxenwho were ploughing in a field six miles away.They came to the lake, draggingthe plough with them, and this left a well-marked furrow on the land which atthe beginning of the twentieth century was said to be still visible.An oldwoman in 1881 claimed to remember crowds gathering at the lake on the firstSunday in August, hoping to see the water boil up as a sign that the Ladyand her oxen would appear (Rhys 1901: I, 10).There was also an Irish traditionrecorded in the Lebor Gabala of two oxen possessed by the goddess Brigid(see pp.35 6).A pair of oxen suggests that she too practised ploughing, andseed-corn was certainly associated with St Brigid.It might be wrapped in acloth or put into a reed basket and hung up beside St Brigid s cross until thetime for sowing, when it was added to the rest of the seed.Sometimes thegrain from the sheaf which provided the straw for Brigid s crosses was alsoused in this way (Danaher 1972: 35), while in parts of Ireland people made aneffort to start ploughing on St Brigid s Day (Ó Cátháin 1995: 4).There were also various ceremonies from eastern Europe in which womenmade ritual use of the plough.Ploughing round a village was used as a meansto protect a community from epidemics or cattle plagues, and Ralston (1872:396) gives a detailed account of this in Russia in the nineteenth century.Thewomen came together dressed in white shifts, with loosened hair, and theoldest among them was yoked to a plough, which was drawn three timesround the village while the rest followed, making sure that the cattle weresafely inside the circle.They sang special songs, some of which Ralstonjudged unfit to repeat, offering a parallel with behaviour at some of Demeter sfestivals (see p.54).Another protective ploughing ceremony took place atmidnight, when the plough was dragged by girls wearing white shifts andwith their hair loose, and one carrying an ikon.Bonfires were set alight, anda black cock thrown into the fire by a woman from a second band, wearingblack petticoats, after which the women dragged the plough three times roundtheir village.Sometimes there was banging and striking of iron implementstogether, in order to drive away the evil influence of the plague (Ralston 1872:396ff.).The importance of the Plough Monday ceremonies in eastern Englandwas emphasized by Olrik (1901) in his article on the ploughing goddess Gefion,and he pointed out resemblances to the taking round of the plough in partsof Denmark in the nineteenth century.Such ceremonies were usually heldaround the New Year, before the spring sowing, although a possible alternativewas at Shrovetide.At Als in Denmark the plough was taken from farm tofarm; there were songs and dancing in which girls took part.The driver of theplough was dressed as a priest and gave a mock sermon, and gifts werecollected before leaving for the next stage of the journey (Olrik 1901: 15).Thecustom of ploughing up the doorposts of those who would not give anything67 Mistress of the Grain to the ploughboys was practised in Denmark in the late eighteenth centuryat Shrovetide.This was well known in East Anglia also, and the belief of theplough-gangs there that they had the right to plough up the lawns ordoorsteps of any household which did not contribute, and that no law in theworld could touch them continued well into the twentieth century (Brockbank1983: 186).In the nineteeth century the Plough Festival held on the first Mondayafter the twelve days of Christmas offered a way for the poorly paidploughmen to earn a little money for themselves, and frequent changes inthe Plough Monday celebrations in the past hundred years show how unwiseit would be to assume continuity with pre-Christian beliefs many centuriesago.Even so, the taking round of the plough and its storage in the church, aceremony revived in the second half of the twentieth century in someCambridgeshire villages with great success, may be fairly regarded as aresumption of a very ancient custom.Olrik was particularly interested in theyoung men in white shirts, sometimes carrying ears of corn, known as  PloughBullocks , or alternatively as Stots, Jacks or Jags (Hole 1978: 238), and alsoin a fantastic  female figure, a man dressed as a woman, known as the OldBessy.This old crone, depicted in various ways but usually terrifying or comic,appeared with a man in a calf s skin, or with the Fool, and might ride on theplough itself (Berger 1988: 80).These perambulations of the plough with awoman in charge, who may originally have been a figure from the supernaturalworld like the German Holda and Perht, suggested to Olrik that Danish customscould have been brought into the Danelaw in the ninth century.Fragmentary though the evidence may be, there seems no doubt that agoddess figure has been associated with the plough and with the sowing ofthe seed in spring in northern Europe.Berger has given convincing evidencefor the continuation of such a concept in Christian times, with the goddessreplaced by the Virgin Mary or some early women saints.The plough remainedto some extent the symbol of a female being who could grant fertility; Grimmsaw silver ploughs in country churches in Germany in the nineteenth centuryalong with silver ships, another symbol of the fertility goddess.Now thathorse-drawn ploughs have been replaced by powerful tractors to turn theearth over, the plough has become the symbol of the old farming way of life,but it remains a symbol also of the renewal of life in the spring and the hopeof a rich harvest to come [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]