Happily, two major events punctuate the darkness, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night. It can seem like a long haul from the start of autumn until the shortest day at the winter solstice followed closely by Christmas (another quarter day). In a curious example of folk etymology, the name was thought to derive from lamb, and the tenants of York Minster were on that day bound to bring a lamb into church. Traditionally, the first bread after the harvest would be blessed in church as a sort of ‘ first fruits’. This name, too, embodies the importance of the harvest, for it is a descendant of Old English hlāfmæsse, literally, ‘loaf mass’. In Scotland, one of the quarter days was Lammas, 1 August. Originally, tens of thousands of geese were marched to it from Norfolk and Lincolnshire to provide meat for the traditional Michaelmas meal. Nottingham’s Goose Fair dates back to the Middle Ages and is still held at the beginning of October but is now a vast funfair. And talking of feasting, at Michaelmas eating a goose fed on the stubble left after the harvest was once a widespread tradition, believed to guarantee financial security for the coming year: The local church will be gaily decorated with seasonal produce and flowers, and there may even be a harvest supper. Still today, a harvest festival or harvest home is a big event in many farming communities. With the harvest successfully gathered in, autumn was the time for food, feasting and festivities. And on quarter days certain obligations became due, such as rents, or leases were begun, or servants hired, or the legal and university terms started, hence the Oxbridge Michaelmas term. The year was split into quarters, each marked by a quarter day, of which Michaelmas was one. Autumn is a bit of a blow-in: it largely ousted fall in the UK as recently as the seventeenth century, though fall is still used in certain areas. The traditional English word for ‘autumn’, which migrated to the United States, was also linked to a natural phenomenon: fall (of the leaf). The Russian word for ‘autumn’, о́сень, also originally denoted ‘harvest’. And as if to emphasize the agrarian connection, hærfest is related to the Latin carpĕre, ‘to pluck’ and the Greek καρπός, karpos, ‘fruit’. This connection lingered on in the Scots for ‘harvest’, hairst, carrying the meaning ‘autumn’ into the eighteenth century. The harvest had to have been gathered by then, for harvest was a critical juncture so critical, indeed, that the Old English word for the third season of the year was hærfest, our modern harvest. Michaelmas signalled the end of one farming cycle. Quarter daysįor our agricultural pre-Industrial Revolution forebears, the turning of the seasons was displayed clearly on the land and in the fields. Because he fought against the powers of darkness in the shape of Satan, so his protection was invoked for the beginning of the darker season. Michaelmas ( Michael + mass) is the feast of St Michael the archangel, also known as the feast of St Michael and All Angels, and St Michael was particularly revered in mediaeval England and gives his name to St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. The common or unposh name for asters is eloquent of autumn: Michaelmas daisies, for Michaelmas falls on 29 September. Many flowers will have gone over, but dahlias, rudbeckias, echinaceas and asters still enliven brown or dun or sere borders. And talking of pears, once upon a time it was traditional to take very hard warden pears, which took more than two hours’ cooking to soften, to make warden pies, as mentioned by the clown in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: ‘I must have saffron to colour the warden pies.’ The start of the UK’s official apples and pears harvesting season varies from year to year depending on how the weather has behaved this year it started on 26 September. Pears, my favourite fruit, are at their drippingly luscious best, and supermarket shelves groan with a kaleidoscopic apple display. The phrase autumn colours is sometimes used to denote the relevant section of the colour wheel. Either way, autumn is now well and truly here, as the yellowing, amber, rufescent fallen or falling leaves and the shrinking days quietly remind us. But the first astronomical day of autumn fell this year on 23 September, the date of the autumn equinox. For convenience, the weather people kickstart autumn by inaugurating it on 1 September.
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