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Exactly the same process recurs in the Indian seasons. The natural division of the North Indian year is into three periods—a warm, a rainy, and a cold season. Three corresponding seasons are the most usual in the Vedic period, and these are still the popular divisions in the Punjab. Later two transitional periods are interpolated, one of an autumnal character between the rainy season and the cold season, and a warm period between the cold season and the hot. These five seasons often occur in the Brahmanas. The well-known six seasons—vasanta, spring; grishma, hot season; varsha, rainy season; śarad, autumn; hemanta, winter; śiśira, cool season: the cold season is divided into two periods—are the result of a systematic comparison with the months, the latter being distributed in pairs among the seasons. By this arrangement the rainy season is the loser, since it embraces at least three months. There is also a second sexpartite division of the year, not indeed mentioned in the Vedic literature but better corresponding to the course of the seasons, in which the rainy season is divided into two periods[324].

The splitting up of the seasons persists to this day among the Germanic peoples; but a systematising of these small seasons is only found when they are referred to the Julian months. This point will be dealt with below, in chapter XI. The phenomenon is known to me from my own native district. The word höst, ‘autumn’, still persists there in the old literal sense of harvest, mowing, and indeed höhösten is particularly the hay-harvest. Hence the designation of the autumn season as höst is felt to be insufficiently accurate and the term is replaced by efterhöst, literally ‘after-harvest’, late autumn. Between summer and efterhöst appears the skyr (dialect for skörd), the harvest, as a fifth season; sometimes there is added a sixth season, sivinter, late winter. Little attention has been paid to this phenomenon, though it is common enough. The periods of the rural occupations in particular give rise to such terms. Any period of this nature is described by the old Swedish word and (ann), now obsolete except in dialects. For the other districts I add from the Dialect Dictionary of Rietz:—hobal, the period on the one hand between the tillage in spring and the hay-harvest, and on the other between the hay- and the corn-harvest, the former period being the greater, the latter the small hobal. Elsewhere the word has the form hovel, summer being divided into hoveln, mellan-anna and ann (which is here used pregnantly to mean harvest). Compounds with and are vår-, säs-, gödsel-, hö-, slått-, skår-, skyr- and sädes-and (periods of spring, sowing, manuring, hay, hay-harvest, harvest, corn). The North Frisians of Amrum and Föhr for instance mark events by the periods um julham (‘at Christmas’), um wosham (‘in early spring’), pluchleth (ploughing-time), meedarleth (hay-harvest), kaarskörd (corn-reaping). In Norway there are current as general time-indications:—fishing-time (fiskja), springtime (voarvinna or voaronn), ploughing-time (plogen or plogvinna), midsummer (haavoll or haaball), ‘between time’, i. e. between ploughing and hay-making, (mellonn), early summer (leggsumar), haymaking-time (høyvinna, høyonn, or slaatt), harvest-time (haustvinna or skurd), ‘shortest-days-time’ (skamtid)[325]. In Iceland, where the sheep-farming is the principal industry, we find:—Lamb-weaning time or Pen-tide, stekk-tid, in May; Parting-tide, fra-faerar, when the sheep are driven to the hills; Market-tide, kaup-tid, when all purchases for the year are made; Home-field hay-time and Out-field hay-time (July and August); Folding-tide, rettir (September), when the sheep are driven off the hill pastures into folds to be separated into flocks and marked. Again from wild birds and eider-ducks one calls the spring Egg-tide. The fisherman uses such seasons as ver-tid, Fishing-tide; of these there is a spring, an autumn, and a winter fishing-month. Flitting-days, fardagar, come in the spring, and skil-dagar in summer, when servants leave.[326] In the old German laws and elsewhere similar time-indications are common, e. g. at plough-time, at the second plough-time, at autumn-sowing, at harvest, at hay-making time, at hemp-gathering, after harvest and hay-making, at the bean-harvest, at plough-time, at the grape-harvest, at sowing-time, at harvest-time, fall of the leaves, sprouting of the leaves, oat-cutting or harvest[327]. In Anglo-Saxon a similar expression occurs in a law of King Vihtraed in the year 696, sexton dæge rugernes (rye-harvest). These periods are in themselves indefinite, they fail to achieve a definite length or quite fixed position in the year. Where they do so, this is due to the comparison with the Julian months, of which more later.

However over the number of the seasons among the Germans or, what has often been regarded as the same thing,—and this is an evidence of the false methods by which the problem has been attacked—over the German division of the year, a long and vigorous dispute has been carried on. That the year was divided into two parts, summer and winter, is well known. I refer to the Scandinavian half-years[328], to the testimony of Bede[329] that the Anglo-Saxons reckoned six months for winter and six for summer, and to the German expressions for a year: ‘in bareness and in leaf’, ‘bare and leaf-clad’, ‘in straw and in grass’[330]. No less a scholar than J. Grimm has cast doubt on the statement of Tacitus that the Germans had only three seasons, but later he withdrew his doubts in view of the consideration that the Germans at the time of Tacitus were acquainted with grain-culture but not with fruit-culture, and that the word autumn, harvest, referred to the fruit and vine-harvests and therefore naturally did not appear among the Germans of that time[331]. In view of the linguistic phenomenon mentioned above, p. 71, it seems now to be agreed that the account of Tacitus is in the main correct. Weinhold has given the treatment of the question its direction. According to him the tripartite division to which reference has been made crowded out the older division into two parts, the points of division, he maintains, doubtless coinciding in the first instance with the three Lauddinge or ungebotene Gerichte (regular courts), which are found as early as the time of Charlemagne. The beginnings of the four seasons—determined from saints’ days—in February, May, August, and November are of foreign origin: on the other hand the quadripartite division of the year, arising from the fact that mid-winter and midsummer were added to the beginning of winter and summer as interpolations in the time-reckoning, is German. This Weinhold tries to prove from the popular festivals associated with these dates. The attempt however is a complete failure. No season begins with any of the solstices, on the contrary these fall right in the middle of a season. His thesis rests on an erroneous conception of the festivals, viz. that they are in general calendar-festivals. Under primitive conditions a festival (the harvest-home in particular) may certainly conclude a division of time and may thus also indicate the beginning of a new season, but as a rule the festivals, though regulated by the calendar, are not so ordered that they coincide with the beginning of a season. We are therefore not authorised in drawing conclusions as to the beginning of a division of the year from the existence of an old festival. Support has been lent to the idea of Weinhold by the fact that in later times the beginnings of the seasons were indicated by festivals and saints’ days. The fact of the matter is that the common medieval calendar was composed of a series of festivals and saints’ days from among which suitable and well-known days were chosen in the dating of the beginnings of the seasons also. For the general understanding it was necessary throughout to bring in popular saints’ days[332]. Tille attacks Weinhold very sharply but remains throughout under the influence of the method indicated by the latter: his work, however, has its good points, inasmuch as it refers to economic conditions, agriculture, the payments of rent, etc. The bipartite division, he asserts, is primitive Indo-European, the tripartite is of foreign (Egyptian) origin: both existed for a long time side by side. This fact is explained by an old sexpartite division of the year, since the six seasons could be run together either in twos or in threes. The beginnings of the half-years are given by natural phenomena, those of the three annual divisions are placed by Tille at March 13, July 10, and Nov. 11, old style: in the north on account of the climatic conditions they are pushed back a month. Hammarstedt[333] remarks very pertinently that the beginning of winter in November, in the north in October, belongs to the reckoning in half-years, and that hence arises the absurdity that Tille has to give Feb. 10 as the date for the beginning of spring in the north. But to assign Dec. 13 with Hammarstedt as the beginning of one of the three seasons agrees just as little with the natural seasons of the year.

The principal error lies in the systematising, the seasons being regarded as periods of a definite number of days. This is not the case even to-day, and still less was it so, as we have seen, among primitive peoples. Still more clearly does the same error of method appear in Tille’s assumption of a sexpartite division of the year, or of sixty-day periods, as they are expressly termed. He refers to the six old Indian seasons, which are a comparatively late and artificial product called forth by the adoption of the names of the seasons in the reckoning by months[334], and to the pairs of months of the Syrian and Arabian calendar. He regards as 60-day divisions not only the smaller seasons mentioned above, p. 75, the duration of which was originally no less indefinite than it is to-day, but also the Germanic pairs of months, which owe their origin to an adaptation of the Roman months (for this see below, ch. XI). The 60-day periods are so far from being primitive that they first took their origin under the influence of the reckoning in months.

In Iceland there still exists a curious calendar, the ‘week-year’. The year is divided into two halves, misseri; the people reckon in so many misseri, not years; it consists of whole weeks, in the ordinary year 52 (= 364 days), in leapyear 53 (= 371 days). Until midsummer (or mid-winter) they reckon forwards, so many weeks of summer or winter have elapsed, after that backwards, so many weeks of summer (winter) remain[335]. Bilfinger in a penetrating study has tried to shew that this curious calendar is an outcome of the ecclesiastical calendarial science of the Middle Ages. He does not however prove his case: rather, the calendar, as tradition shews, reaches far back into heathen times[336].

The reckoning in weeks was once common to all Scandinavia. The Lapps have special names for every week of the year, borrowed from festivals and saints’ days falling within the weeks; they have therefore taken from the Scandinavians the reckoning in weeks and adapted it to the uses of a primitive time-reckoning. From the same source they have also derived the special significance of the summer night (April 14, Tiburtius) and of the winter night (Oct. 14, Calixtus), from which also two weeks are named. The system is better preserved in certain parts of South Sweden[337]. The people count in räppar, quarter-years—in Öland they are called trettingar, thirteenths, i. e. 13 weeks—beginning with the räppadagar: these are Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas Day, and Christmas Day, old style. Just as in Iceland, they reckon backwards, not however in the same quarters as there, but in the quarters before Midsummer and Christmas: in the other two quarters they count forwards. In northern Scania I have met with a relic of the same type of reckoning, the ‘number of weeks’ (ugetalet), which begins on April 6 (Lady Day, old style), and is reckoned backwards as far as the thirteenth week. The duration of both rural occupations and natural phenomena is determined in so many weeks. As the starting-point of this reckoning in weeks the four great festivals which come nearest to the four points of the solstices and equinoxes are chosen. There can be no doubt that these have made their appearance under the influence of the Christian calendar instead of the four Old Scandinavian points of division of the year. The people call Calixtus’ day (Oct. 14) the first day of winter, and Tiburtius’ day (April 14) the first day of summer; many rune-staves have this division of the year, and almost all describe the former by a tree without leaves, the latter by a tree in leaf. They fall in the same weeks as the initial days of winter and summer in Iceland, which vary there on account of the peculiar arrangement of the calendar. In Scandinavia, however, they have been transformed into fixed days under the influence of the Julian calendar.

It is a natural conclusion that the reckoning in weeks had its origin in the use of the rune-staff. Since the week-day letters on these are repeated the whole year through, the weeks offered an easy means of reckoning. This conclusion is certainly correct, but still we may venture to ask why the week-day letters were admitted into the national calendar by the North especially, and why the reckoning in weeks should be adopted in popular use only there. The reason can only be that the counting in weeks was already in use before the rune-staff was introduced. This mode of counting, which in Iceland had been developed into a curious form of year, was in Scandinavia adapted to the Julian calendar and remained bound up with this. The leap-week was therefore unnecessary. The old basis is however still preserved in the points of departure, the summer and winter nights. It is the same system as the Icelandic, built up on the week and the year, but differently modified: the idea of any borrowing cannot be entertained. The basis of this calendar, therefore, was once common to all Scandinavia, and the calendar must go back to heathen times.

Under the influence of the popular lay astrology the week was early spread among the Germanic peoples: on it and on an approximate knowledge of the length of the year, such as could easily be acquired in the lively intercourse with Christian lands during the Viking period, the system of the Icelandic calendar is built up. An indigenous element however appears, the half-year reckoning, and indeed the great probability is that the limitation of the half-year to a fixed number of days was first achieved as a result of this systematising of the calendar. Winter and summer, like all natural seasons, had at first no fixed limits. The quarters arose in the course of the reckoning, the people counting forwards in the first half of the half-year and backwards in the other half. The middle points of the half-year, mid-winter and midsummer, fell where both reckonings met. This agrees with the popular objection to high numbers. The Germanic tribes of the south, in accordance with their milder climate, commonly reckoned five months for winter. In the north the dead season is longer, about six months, and this fact has contributed to the half-year reckoning which, as has already been remarked, is widely characteristic of northern peoples. That the limits between both seasons were unstable and could be moved forward according to circumstances is in my opinion shewn by the names of the initial days of the half-year—sumarmál (plural) and vetrnaetr, ‘the winter nights’. Where a definitely determined day is in question the plural is out of place: it is used to describe a period, for instance jol (plur.) denotes Christmas-time[338].

With the two opening days of the calendar and the one division in the middle are often combined the three great sacrificial feasts, the autumn festival at the winter nights, the Yule festival at mid-winter, and the spring festival at the summer nights. It is true that the first of these festivals, which was celebrated at the beginning of a period of rest after the completion of the harvest and agricultural labour, denoted, as such festivals often do, the conclusion of the old year and the beginning of the new. That it was fixed for a definite day cannot be demonstrated any more than that the festival of victory in spring, celebrated before the Vikings went forth on their voyages, fell exactly on the summer night. On the contrary the time probably varied according to circumstances: the expression of Snorre lacks calendarial accuracy and remains indefinite:—“They should sacrifice against the winter to get a good year, and at mid-winter sacrifice for germination; the third sacrifice in summer, and this was a sacrifice of victory”[339]. In historical times the Yule festival is regulated by the Christian calendar; Snorre says that in heathen times it was celebrated at the hökku night, but of this we have no certain knowledge. Things happened as in the Middle Ages and later: after a calendar has arisen the festivals are regulated by this, but they are not calendar-festivals, and in reconstructing the scheme of the calendar from the festivals very great caution must be exercised.

Our conclusion is that the Germanic seasons, like the seasons in general, were not in themselves definitely limited divisions of time, and that alongside of the greater seasons smaller ones arose without there being any numerical determination of the relationship between the two. Seasons only become divisions consisting of a definite number of days when in the regulation of the calendar they are taken over as calendar divisions, as winter and summer were in Scandinavia. Where a calendar has arisen directly out of the seasons, the divisions, like the seasons, are of varying length[340]. This also shews that the Germanic seasons first attained a definite number of days through the calendar-regulation introduced from abroad. Further, when a calendar existed, the beginning of the seasons could be given with reference to this: the day varied according to circumstances, but the choice was limited in this manner, viz. that only a popular festival or saint’s day was appropriate as a distinguishing day. Here also, therefore, the calendar was the starting-point for the regulation of the seasons. A division of the year in the more accurate sense also first arose through the regulation of the calendar, since, owing to the method of calculation, the middle days of the half-year divisions became distinguishing days in the calendar. When the calendar came, the old festivals were also regulated by it.

By way of supplement two or three curious exceptional cases may be noted. A completely isolated instance is offered by the Bangala of the Upper Congo, who count in lunar months, and, since there is no dry season, reckon for longer periods by the rise of the rivers[341]. In the monsoon districts however it is frequently a peculiarity to distinguish the seasons by the winds. Of Sumatra it is reported:—The principal seasons are named after the quarters of the heavens from which the wind blows. At the time when we were in Taluk, April to mid-June, the south monsoon was blowing; the east, the west, and the north monsoons also come under consideration for the seasons. Moreover the people also distinguish a dry and a rainy period. The seasons 4. tahun djin, 5. tahun wou, 6. tahun sai were regarded as falling within the rainy period, while the dry season set in with 1. t. ali, and continued with 2. t. dal awal, and 3. t. dal akhir. In the two seasons 7. t. ha and 8. t. ‘am dry and wet weather alternate[342]. In New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago), between the two greater seasons of the south-east and the north-west monsoons, each consisting of 5 months, there were two smaller intermediate seasons of one month each, the period of variable winds and the period of calm[343]. In Songa (Vellalavella), one of the Solomon Islands, various seasons are distinguished according to the direction of the wind:—the time of the west wind, nanano; the time of the almond-ripening, tovarauru (the time of the north wind); rari, the time of the south wind—during this period calm prevails at night but there is wind in the day-time; sassa nanamo, time of the east wind; mbule, time of calm, lasting about a month. After mbule follow tovaruru, lasting about 2 months, and sassa nanamo, one month. In Lambutjo the matter is still further complicated. The following winds are distinguished:—south wind, west wind, good wind at the time of almond-ripening, lasting about one month. Further the east wind, strong or quite weak with squalls, not good. Three months afterwards comes the west wind, lasting about 2–3 months. After the east wind a south-west wind, very strong, at that time one cannot sail on the sea: it often comes 5 months after the east wind. After the south-west wind a SE wind, lasting only 1–2 weeks. Then strong E wind, lasting 1–2 months, during which time navigation in canoes is impossible. Then again a time of ‘clear water’, i. e. calm, lasting two months. After this, S wind, NW wind, and NE wind. Each of these lasts only a short time, altogether they occupy 3–4 months. Then begins a lighter E wind, lasting 3–4 weeks. Then about one month of light W wind, then again stronger E wind for 1–2 months. Afterwards S wind for 1½-2 months, lighter SE wind for 1–2 weeks, and then again stronger E wind for 2–3 months. At the time of the west wind there is much rain, at the time of the east wind much sunshine[344]. It is very interesting to see how accurately primitive peoples observe Nature, but these are not indications of time. On the Gazelle Peninsula it has been observed that when the SE monsoon blows the sun comes up in the east, and when the NW monsoon blows it rises in the south: the wind comes from the opposite direction to that in which the sun rises[345].