ABSTRACT
Harvest-home was the most important and the best-loved festival. The whole of the toilers – men, women and children – attended this; the brewhouse and kitchen, too, were needed to hold the company. But the tone of reports of harvest homes as the century advanced almost suggests that they had become anachronistic in the circumstances of a wage economy and a rigidly structured hierarchical society. The fact that on certain farms they were being revived when they were a continuing though declining custom suggests a self-consciousness that altered the whole content of the custom. The impact of the Harvest Festival on the actual form of the celebration suggests a change in the purpose of the custom. The harvest home was essentially a time for relaxation from the cares of work, for the long weeks of continuous labour were over, and from social conventions, for everyone was licensed to drink their fill.
