Among the old-world customs connected with the times and seasons, that of celebrating the ingathering of the harvest with a rustic festival has survived many which have either passed away, and almost out of memory, or have come to have only a partial and precarious hold upon the minds of the present generation. The rush-cart maintains a feeble struggle for existence in a few northern localities, but each year shows diminished vigour; the May-day festival of the chimney-sweepers has become obsolete, and the dance round the May-pole an open-air ballet; and many old observances connected with the Christmas season which were formerly common to all England are now kept up only in these northern counties, where the flavour of antiquity seems to be much more highly appreciated than in the south. But the harvest home festival holds its ground with equal persistency in both portions of the kingdom, and has of late years been invested with additional glories, sometimes with a superabundance of them which threatens a reaction. There were some features of the older celebrations of the ingathering of the fruits of the earth, however, which, from various causes, have fallen into disuse, and which many of us would gladly, if it were possible, see restored. We could welcome, for instance, the songs into which the joyous feelings of the harvesters broke forth in the old times as the last load of grain was carried off the field, and when the lads and lasses, with the older rustics, had partaken of a good supper in the farmer's kitchen, and afterwards danced to the music of the fiddle or pipes in the barn. There are many references to the feasting and singing and dancing customs of this season in the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tusser tells us that:-- "In harvest time, harvest folk, servants and all, Should make all together, good cheer in the hall, And fill the black bowl, so blithe to their song, And let them be merry, all harvest time long." Peele, in his "Old Wives' Tales," makes his harvesters sing:-- "Lo, here we come a-reaping, a-reaping, To reap our harvest fruit; And thus we pass the year so long, And never be we mute."