Scythes require more specific wind and moisture conditions compared to sickles (as do combines), but they do save a ton of work. My favorite scythe fact is that there is an even faster but more dangerous version called the Flemish Scythe, that is one-handed. From "The Scythe Book":

...John Gerard, in his seven- teenth-century Herball, recorded an accident wherein the mower:

made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of blood; the poore man crept upon this herbe (Clownes Wound wort or All-heale), which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantity of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his dayes work againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day until he was perfectly whole, which was accomplished in a few dayes.

Fucking hardcore.