People who work in the fields are especially given to joyful shouting. Harvesters and grape-gatherers and other fruit-pickers are greatly cheered by a plentiful crop and rejoice over the fecundity and bounty of the earth. In their exultation they sing, and between the words of their songs they interject happy, wordless sounds that express the elation they feel. This is called jubilation, shouting for joy.Related post: I Hear America Singing.
maxime iubilant qui aliquid in agris operantur; copia fructuum iucundati uel messores, uel uindemiatores, uel aliquos fructus metentes, et in ipsa fecunditate terrae et feracitate gaudentes, exsultando cantant et inter cantica quae uerbis enuntiant, inserunt uoces quasdam sine uerbis in elatione exsultantis animi, et haec uocatur iubilatio.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Shouting for Joy
Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 99.4 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 39, p. 1394; tr. Maria Boulding):