character, as if it were a rude archaic temple in some corner of
the antique world, which had been adorned, two thousand years
ago, by pious country folk for some local festival. The old
clergyman was not in the least shocked by my remark; it seemed
indeed rather to please him; there was, he agreed, something of
a pagan character in the modern Harvest Festival--it was no
doubt a bit of the old primitive Vegetation Ritual, the old
Religion of the soil; a Festival, which, like so many others,
had not been destroyed by Christianity, but absorbed into it,
and given a new meaning. "Indeed," he added, talking on as if
the subject interested him, and expressing himself with a
certain donnish carefulness of speech that I found pleasant to
listen to, "the Harvest Festival is undoubtedly a survival of
the prehistoric worship of that Corn Goddess who, in classical
times, was called Demeter and Ioulo and Ceres, but whose cult as
an Earth-Mother and Corn-Spirit is of much greater antiquity.
For there is no doubt that this Vegetation Spirit has been
worshipped from the earliest times by agricultural peoples; the
wheat fields and ripe harvests being naturally suggestive of the
presence amid the corn of a kindly Being, who, in return for due
rites and offerings, will vouchsafe nourishing rains and golden
harvests." He mentioned the references in Virgil, and the
description in Theocritus of a Sicilian Harvest Festival--these
were no doubt familiar to me; but if I was interested in the
subject, I should find, he said, much more information collected
in a book which he had written, but of which I had probably
never heard, about the Vegetation Deities in Greek Religion. As
it happened I knew the book, and felt now much interested in my
chance meeting with the distinguished author; and after
expressing this as best I could, I rode off, promising to visit