Harvest Home
Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker**, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come;
Raise the song of harvest home!
We ourselves are God’s own field,
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Grant, O harvest Lord, that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take the harvest home;
From His field shall in that day
All offences purge away,
Giving angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In the garner evermore.
Then, thou Church triumphant come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All be safely gathered in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
In God’s garner to abide;
Come, ten thousand angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home!
[Lyrics by George Job Elvey (1816 – 1893) in Public Domain]
** For a more “pagan” version, change “God, our Maker” to “Earth, our Mother.”
I have had a fondness for this hymn for a great many years.
Harvest Home, also called Ingathering, is a traditional English harvest festival, celebrated from antiquity and surviving to modern times in isolated regions. Participants celebrate the last day of harvest in late September by singing, shouting, and decorating the village with boughs. The cailleac, or last sheaf of corn (grain), which represents the spirit of the field, is made into a harvest doll and drenched with water as a rain charm. This sheaf is saved until spring planting.
The ancient festival also included the symbolic murder of the grain spirit, as well as rites for expelling the devil.
A similar festival was traditionally held in parts of Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. For more information on corn festivals in general, I suggest reading Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, particularly Volume 7 (1912): Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (Part 1) and Volume 8 (1912): Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (Part 2)
Harvest Home is also the title of a 1973 novel by Thomas Tryon, about a family who moves to a secluded village in Connecticut, Cornwall Coombe, and slowly learns “the Dark Secret of Harvest Home” (title of the 1978 television miniseries based on the novel, starring Bette Davis), the secret being that the old ways are not yet dead, but in need of fresh blood to reinvigorate them. It was of enough notice that Herman Slater ran an article about it in The Earth Religions News.