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By: Jason
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. - Jane Austen
August, the eighth month of the current Gregorian calendar and the third month of Summer's rule, derives its name from Augustus (Augustus Caesar). The traditional birthstone amulets of August are the peridot and the sardonyx; and the gladiolus and the poppy are the month's traditional flowers. August is shared by the astrological signs of Leo the Lion and Virgo the Virgin, and is sacred to the following Pagan deities: Ceres, the Corn Mother, Demeter, John Barleycorn, Lugh, and all goddesses who preside over agriculture. During the month of August, the Great Solar Wheel of the Year is turned to Lammas, one of the four Grand Sabbats celebrated each year by Wiccans and modern Witches throughout the world.
Harvest festivals are rife in August, when crops of staple grasses (wheat, barley, oats etc) are cut and brought in between Lammas Day (the first of the month) and Michaelmas Day (the 29th of September). Harvest festivals conveniently bring us to the subject of harvest mice, a thoroughly under-represented species in the Redwall books.
Six characters of note throughout the Redwall saga are Harvest Mice.
Hillyah, Oreal, Ralg and Irgle, a family of four, were somewhat involved with the main storyline of High Rhulain, aiding the main character Tiria Wildlough in deciphering a riddle trail which led to the Green Isle and later accidentally provoking and fending off a gannet hiding in the Abbey's attic.
Abbot Saxtus (Martin the Warrior, Mariel of Redwall, The Bellmaker) is a harvest mouse, and a sensible and benign one at that. With other harvest mouse characters often shown as skittish, this placid and calm creature is a pleasure to read about and to know, inasfar as one can know a Redwall character. If you're wondering where he appears within Martin the Warrior, be sure to read the parts of the story which occur in the present day, rather than the main text.
Nimbalo the Slayer, accomplice to Deyna (The Taggerung), was a young and quite traumatised thing. Initially abused by his father, the youth one day found his home in ruins and his father dead by his own battleaxe, and set off on a quest of vengeance which culminated in the death of Dagrab by the same weapon.
Harvest mice do appear across a nice spectrum of character roles; family, authority, kindness, calmness, recklessness and vengeful - but I do believe there's not enough of them and for that matter, I'd like to see more sea otters as well.