Five Antiquities of Hay (was Thy Thigh, etc)

[philjennings at juno.com]

(1) Straw was a seasonally abundant product from the beginning of
agriculture, and the ingenuity of early farmers would have applied the
use of this material to hats, mats, fire-starters, bedding, roofing
(thatch), flooring, et cetera.  In the off seasons, cut grass might have
substituted for some of these uses, and the iceman used cut grass for
clothing material.  Nothing in all this relates to "hay" as cut grass
used as fodder.

(2) An alternative very early origin of "hay" may have related to the
taming of wild animals.  There may have been a time when experimental
taming was the style, and captured young plant-eating animals would have
been kept in enclosures, and supplied with hay during the taming period.
Some of these creatures would have been successfully tamed, most not.
Continuity in the use of "hay" in these sorts of experiments is not
likely.  Either the animals became tame, or they were failures.  Either
way, it was not an interminable necessity to cut and store inventories of
cut grass.

(3) Another early occasion for the invention of "hay" also related to
enclosures.  These were not enclosures used for taming, but rather for
the protection of herd animals at night.  The animals would have been
more comfortable in their stockades, protected against predators, if food
was available.  The LBK people used stockades, but I know of no evidence
that they supplied their night cattle with cut grasses.  If they did, no
large inventories were required.  It might have happened as the spirit
moved them.

(4) The LBK people, or the Corded Ware people who came after, trying to
make efficient use of the land near their settlements, without risking
the lives of their valuable cattle, would have sent young churls out to
problematic wet and half-boggy lands to cut grass and bring it back to
where the animals might eat safely.  This late scenario for the invention
of "hay" is connected to the settlement of northern Europe, short of the
heavy snow zone.  As the proto-Germanic word for hay, and the
Baltic-Slavic word for hay, seem not to be related, I suspect that these
two groups went their own ways northward into separate boggy zones,
neither an origin for the other.

(5) the final theory for "hay" relates to regions where snow covers the
ground thickly for several months of the year, and hay has to be cut in
summer, to keep cattle alive in winter.  However, the peoples who moved
into snow country, must necessarily have come from bog country, and so
already knew of "hay" and did not have to invent the stuff.