Harvest Fields
SIR.—There have been two literary references in the Spectator recently to harvest fields, one querying the appropriateness of Tennyson's epithet " happy," the other quoting a ." hymn-writer's " description of the " white- ness of ripe crops." In neither instance was reference made to the probable source, the Bible. In Psalm 65 the corn-laden valleys " shout for joy " and "sing"; the " fields white unto the harvest" come from the Gospels (e.g. St. John IV, 35). Here the description is surelyof barley, not oats as your contributor suggests. Incidentally, a twelfth-century Abbot of Glastonbury waxes lyrical over his grain grown in soil.redeemed from moorland: "in ea vidi segetem aureo colore rutilantem ad !eves auras suaviler murmurantem" (see the current Journal of the British Archaeological Association, p. 43).—Yours faithfully,
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