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.Although the spell is given the title for bewitched land , its purposeappears to be to ensure good luck at sowing time, resulting in a rich harvestnot just for one unprofitable field but for the land as a whole.There has beenmuch discussion as to whether the reference to Erce is a call to an earthgoddess, but few have been willing to accept this; if it were really the nameor title of a pagan deity, it would be surprising to find it in a spell which hasclearly been subject to much Christianization.It might be an example ofgibberish, as Grendan (1909: 155, 220) suggested, or perhaps a cry ofacclamation.From references to Earth (folde), Mother of men, and to Earthbringing forth in god s embrace, together with appeals to St Mary and thegod of high heaven, it seems probable that this was originally addressed to agoddess who caused the grain to sprout and grow, with a call to the sky godto send the necessary rain, as in the cult of Demeter (see p.4).The idea of the Virgin Mary assisting in the sowing of the seed survivedin Carpathia and other areas of Russia up to the nineteenth century.Ralston62 Mistress of the Grain (1872: 193) gives the following song among those sung at Christmastide:Afield, afield, out in the open field.There a golden plough goes ploughing,And behind that plough is the Lord Himself,The holy Peter helps him to drive,And the Mother of God carries the seed-corn,Carries the seed corn, prays to the Lord God: Make, O Lord, the strong wheat to grow,The strong wheat and the vigorous corn.The stalks there shall be like reeds.The ears shall be as blades of grass.The sheaves shall be like the stars.The stacks shall be like hills.The loads shall be gathered together like black clouds.Similar examples have been recorded more recently from Ossetia, as in a songfrom Digoron in western Ossetia, collected by M.Gardanov and published in1927.Here Elijah, St Nicholas and St George may have replaced earlier pre-Christian deities, while Mary as in the Russian song is the bearer of the seed:Mother Mary was the bearer of the seed,while Divine Elijah of the Grain was the sower of the seed.They made long furrows, broad tilled fields,How the grain grew for them that year.The quail danced beneath it;The cart rolled over it;This year in our tilled fields that grain will grow.(Gardanov 1927, translated by A.Chaudhri)Jacob Grimm found German parallels to the loaf to be baked and laid besidethe furrow in the Anglo-Saxon charm; there are early references to a loaf asbig as the plough-wheel, which might be fastened to the axle while theploughman drove the plough, moving gently enough for a finch to feed heryoung on the wheel.This should be made from all the different types ofgrain grown on the farm (Grimm 1883: III, 1239).Similarly in the Anglo-Saxonspell the turves from the field laid before the altar were to be anointed withoil, honey, yeast and milk from every cow on the land, while samples of woodfrom every tree and bush growing there (except hardwood trees such as beechand oak), and pieces of every herb (except burdock), were to be laid on theturves.There is a further parallel in the special cake baked at harvest time inthe Hebrides from the different grains grown on the farm as well as samplesof meal (Solheim, 1956: 91).In a passage quoted by Grimm (1883: III, 1,240) from an early Latin63 Mistress of the Grain commentary by Verelius on Hervarar Saga, some of the flesh of the Yuleboar in Sweden is said to be dried and kept till spring, to be grated in with theseed-corn, while part is given to the plough-horses and part to the ploughmen.Again in Scania a salted pig s head with trotters and tail were kept from theYule feast, laid on a flat loaf, and shared between the ploughman and hishorses at the first spring ploughing (Nilsson 1938: 44).There is a resemblancehere to the Greek custom of adding the rotted remains of the piglets sacrificedto Demeter to the seed used for sowing (see p.54).The boar was associatedwith the goddess Freyja, and the link with loaf and plough is in keeping withtraditions of a goddess of the grain.It has been generally assumed that thechoice of the pig as a symbol of the fertility goddess was due to its capacityfor breeding, but it is worth noting that Peter Reynolds, in his study of IronAge agriculture, refers to the pig as a potential plough (Reynolds 1979: 53).The point had been made much earlier by Swift in Book III of Gulliver sTravels, although the impractical scientists of Laputa found the use of pigsto replace ploughs too difficult to organize.Wild pigs have very long snouts,and their capacity to turn over the soil when searching for acorns might atleast partly account for the association with the goddess of grain both inGreece and northern Europe.A further ritual use of the plough was that of the marking of a boundary,to protect the area which the plough encircled.In the British Museum thereis a tiny bronze figure of a ploughman with his ard and team (Rees 1979:61ff.), described by Manning (1971) as skilful and detailed work, which wasfound on the site of a third-century Roman fort at Piercebridge and dated tothe second or third century AD.A bronze figure of this kind is likely to havehad votive significance; it has been claimed to represent a ritual ploughing,since a cow and bull are yoked to the plough contrary to normal practice.Plutarch in his Life of Romulus describes such a ritual used by Romulus whenbuilding the walls of Rome.Having marked out the circular line of the wallsfrom the centre of the city, he fitted a brazen ploughshare to his plough, andyoked a bull and cow together to draw it, while those who followed him turnedall the clods raised by the plough inwards towards the centre.The walls werebuilt inside the circular furrow cut by the plough, and where a gate was to bemade, the plough was lifted over the gap; Plutarch states that the whole wall,apart from the gates, was regarded as sacred
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