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254.—Saxon Emblems of the Month of July, in England more
calendars, months, july, people, farming, farmers, harvest, harvesting, wheat, corn, carts, costumes, anglo-saxon costumes
In the main scene here we see three men with sickles harvesting wheat as tall as they are, and another man standing on a rock with a long stick or cane and blowing a bugle, presumably a foreman. Four other men work at tying the wheat into sheaves, or bundles, and putting them into a cart. In the far background we see a tower, probably of an English country church.
At upper left a man in tunic and skirt uses a hard rake; at upper right someone perhaps in a dress or knee-length robe weilds a scythe.
July.
This was the Heu-monat or Hey-monat, the Hay-month. The July of Spenser bears the scythe and sickle:—
“Behind his back a scythe, and by his side
Under his belt he bore a sickle circling wide.”
These instruments were probably indifferently [without preference] used in the harvests of the Anglo-Saxons, as they still are in many of our English counties (Figs. 254, 258).
(p. 70)
The ornate border is available as a separate image.