The rules of pronunciation understood about Okebourne seemed to consist in lengthening the syllables that are usually spoken quick, and shortening those that are usually long. Hilary said that years ago it really appeared as if there was something deficient in the organs of the throat among the labourers, for there were words they positively could not pronounce. The word ‘reservoir’, for instance, was always ‘tezzievoy’; they could not speak the word correctly. He could not explain to me a very common expression among the men when they wished to describe anything unusual or strange for which they had no exact equivalent. It was always ‘a sort of a meejick’. By degrees, however, we traced it back to ‘menagerie’. The travelling shows of wild beasts at first so much astonished the villagers that everything odd and curious became a menagerie, afterwards corrupted to ‘meejick’.
‘Caddle no man’s cattle’ was a favourite proverb with a population who were never in a hurry. ‘Like shot out of a show’l’, to express extreme nimbleness, was another. A comfortless, bare apartment was ‘gabern’; anything stirred with a pointed instrument was ‘ucked’ – whether a cow ‘ucked’ the fogger with her horn or the stable was cleaned out with the fork. The verb ‘to uck’ was capable indeed of infinite conjugation, and young Aaron, breaking off a bennet, once asked me to kindly ‘uck’ a grain of hay-dust out of his eye with it. When a heron rose out of the brook ‘a moll ern flod away’.
With all their apparent simplicity some of the cottage folk were quite up to the value of appearances. Old Aaron had a little shop; he and his wife sold small packets of tea, tobacco, whipcord, and so forth. Sometimes while his wife was weighing out the sugar, old Aaron – wretched old deceiver – would come in rustling a crumpled piece of paper as if it were a banknote, and handing it to her with much impressiveness of manner whisper loudly, ‘Now you take un and put un away; and mind you don’t mix um. You put he along with the fives and not with the tens.’
Hilary once showed me the heel of a boot which had just been mended by the hedge carpenter and cobbler who worked for him; and offered to bet that not all the scientific people in Europe, with microscope, spectrum analysis, all their appliances, could tell what leather the new heel-piece was made of. Unable to guess, I gave it up; it was of bacon. A pig that was never a ‘good doer’ was found in a ditch dead. There is always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig or sheep; it was the cobbler’s turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using it as leather to mend shoes; so half his customers walked about the world on bacon heels.
So far as I could discover, the cottage folk did not now use many herbs. They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow flowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmed figwort, which they called ‘cresset’ or ‘cressil’, were occasionally placed on a sore; and the yarrow – locally ‘yarra’ – was yet held in estimation as a salve or ointment.
It would be possible for any one to dwell a long time in the midst of a village, and yet never hear anything of this kind and obtain no idea whatever of the curious mixture of the grotesque, the ignorance and yet cleverness, which go to make up hamlet life. But so many labourers and labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen at Lucketts’ Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these items from Mrs Luckett and Cicely. Years since they had employed even more labour, before machinery came into use so much: then as many as twenty-four women might have been counted in one hayfield, all in regular rank like soldiers, turning the hay ‘wallows’ with their rakes. ‘There’s one thing now you have forgotten,’ said Cicely. ‘They pick the canker-roses off the briars and carry them in the pocket as a certain preventive of rheumatism.’
Minute Cultivation – A Silver Mine
First published in the Live Stock Journal, 26 July 1878
First collected in Chronicles of the Hedges, 1948
Is it absolutely necessary that agriculture should be for ever confined to two methods of culture only; must a farm never produce anything but cereals or grass? No matter what the size of a field may be, whether it be five, ten, or fifty acres, there seems to be a fixed immutable law that the whole of it must be devoted to one purpose. There must be fifty acres grass, or there must be fifty acres corn. This remarkable uniformity, which is so characteristic of English agriculture, has of course its advantages, as in the case of arable land, where a large area can be better worked by machinery than a small one. But then for that to be an advantage, it presupposes the crop a profitable one, whereas the general experience is notoriously that wheat-farming is not profitable. Landlords are constantly finding their farms in the wheat counties returned upon their hands, because the tenants are no longer able to work them, or because they prefer to retire upon the capital they still have left. This is an old story, but it increases one’s astonishment that landlords and tenants alike do not turn their attention to a fresh system of culture, instead of adhering to a plan proved unsuitable to the conditions of the age. Grass we know is profitable, on account of livestock, and the recent development of the dairy; yet even on grass farms some modification, if only on a small scale, might be found to give better returns. But the idea that anything else could be cultivated besides corn and grass – the idea of any other agriculture besides arable and pasture being possible – does not appear to occur to them.
Yet every condition of modern life points in the direction of minute cultivation. Look at the millions of people in great cities (and small cities, too, for the matter of that) who cannot grow a single vegetable or a single apple for their own use. They must either go without these most desirable and health-giving articles of diet, or buy them. If bought – not to say anything of the high price of fruit – the article is found too frequently to have lost half the relish, and three-fourths of its dietary value, because it is not fresh. It is not fresh because it has had to travel many hundreds or even thousands of miles, and in order to stand that ordeal it has had to be gathered long before ripe. There is nothing so delicious as a ripe English apple, nothing so wholesome; but where are you to get it? If you chance to have friends in the country perhaps you may; if not, you will find, upon inquiry, that your dessert apples have come all the way from America, and have cost you a pretty sum. At the same moment we are told that large areas of land are being returned upon the landlord’s hands because wheat-farming is unprofitable. An obstinate traditionary rule requires that under any and every circumstance such and such farms shall grow nothing but corn (as the primary crop), let the result be what it may. Meantime thousands upon thousands of pounds are sent out of the country for such a simple thing as fruit. And the point lies in this, that in despite of the expenditure on foreign fruit supplies, there is never enough good fruit to be got – the demand is so much greater than the supply. Just in the flush of the season there may be an overplus, because everybody now endeavours to be first in the market, and this race causes a temporary block. But inquire later on; ask at Christmas, or in the spring, and the reply will be, no apples but Americans, and these not over good. Now it is just here that English growers ought to step in. Our climate is not a forcing one; stimulants are required to get home productions forward enough to compete with those of brighter skies. English fruit should, then, be of the keeping kind – apples, for instance, that would come in at Christmas, and later than that. Our grandmothers used to pride themselves on producing from their stores a fine apple eight months old; there are sorts, unless we mistake, that will keep much longer; the conditions of the times are such that what they only practised as a pleasure might be made to yield a large profit.
Not, of course, that wheat fields of fifty acres are to be turned bodily into orchards; but why not add to the one
general yield of the farm some secondary produce of a high value in the market? Apples are only given as an example. All other kinds of fruit, without exception, pay well. Why should not a farmer take a corner of a large field, say one of fifty acres, and fencing off five out of the fifty, devote that five to vegetables or to fruit? He might find the five so profitable as to induce an enlargement of the venture. Transit now is so easy that no difficulties could arise on that score. Under his very eyes he sees the common, uneducated labourer eager to get a large allotment – competing for a cottage that happens to have a good strip of garden; and labourers’ gardens, let it be observed, are always full as they can hold of fruit-trees. They know full well that a good crop on one single tree will pay their rent; a fair crop throughout their little orchard will not only pay their rent, but supply the family with clothes. The ignorant labourer sighs for a morsel of land, knowing from the experience of his friends and relations that his spade would literally dig up silver from it. The farmer with 400 acres looks at his yellow wheat, shakes his head with the market prices in his hand, and mournfully informs his landlord’s agent that he must give it up, and go and eke out an existence upon the interest of the money he has not yet sunk. Could any contrast be more telling? The thing speaks for itself; but so strong is tradition and custom that loud as the voice may be it is unheeded. With his 400 acres the farmer, too, has this great advantage over the labourer’s silver mine of one quarter acre. This one quarter acre is of course in one position only; it may be damp, it may be dry, the aspect may be north or east. He cannot move on. But on the 400 acres every variety of aspect may be found, and in all probability one or more varieties of soil. By cultivating a few acres on the garden system at one extremity of the farm, where the soil is naturally moist, it can be readily irrigated, and another few acres at the other extremity, where it is naturally dry and can stand a great deal of rain without injury, he may make himself in a measure independent of the season. Whether wet or dry one or other plot would pay. There is a mine of wealth yet on every farm in this country, if only men could be brought to step out of the old jog-trot round. In order to sow a seed of reflection in his mind that may grow and germinate, let any farmer ask himself the question, why should my great field yonder yield only one crop, and that of a doubtful value? Having reflected on that, let him next visit the nearest allotment-grounds; or, better still, the nearest cottage gardens (as trees, even fruit-trees, are excluded from allotments very often) and inquire why the ignorant labourer is so anxious for a slice, however small, of earth. It is because minute cultivation returns a hundred-fold, and every spadeful of earth glistens with specks of precious ore.
The Amateur Poacher: Oby and His System – The Moucher’s Calendar
First published as a serial in the Pall Mall Gazette, 1879
First collected in The Amateur Poacher, 1879
One dark night, as I was walking on a lonely road, I kicked against something, and but just saved myself from a fall. It was an intoxicated man lying at full length. As a rule, it is best to let such people alone; but it occurred to me that the mail-cart was due: with two horses harnessed tandem-fashion, and travelling at full speed, the mail would probably go over him. So I seized the fellow by the collar and dragged him out of the way. Then he sat up, and asked in a very threatening tone who I was. I mentioned my name: he grunted, and fell back on the turf, where I left him.
The incident passed out of my mind, when one afternoon a labourer called, asking for me in a mysterious manner, and refusing to communicate his business to any one else. When admitted, he produced a couple of cock pheasants from under his coat, the tail feathers much crumpled, but otherwise in fine condition. These he placed on the table, remarking, ‘I ain’t forgot as you drawed I out of the raud thuck night.’ I made him understand that such presents were too embarrassing; but he seemed anxious to do ‘summat’, so I asked him to find me a few ferns and rare plants.
This he did from time to time; and thus a species of acquaintanceship grew up and I learned all about him. He was always called ‘Oby’ (i.e. Obadiah), and was the most determined poacher of a neighbouring district – a notorious fighting man – hardened against shame, an Ishmaelite openly contemning authority and yet not insensible to kindness. I give his history in his own language – softening only the pronunciation, that would otherwise be unintelligible.
‘I lives with my granny in Thorney-lane: it be outside the village. My mother be married agen, you see, to the smith: her have got a cottage as belongs to her. My brother have got a van and travels the country; and sometimes I and my wife goes with him. I larned to set up a wire when I went to plough when I were a boy, but never took to it regular till I went a-navigating [navvying] and seed what a spree it were.
‘There ain’t no such chaps for poaching as they navigators in all England: I means where there be a railway a-making. I’ve knowed forty of ’em go out together on a Sunday, and every man had a dog, and some two; and good dogs too – lots of ’em as you wouldn’t buy for ten quid. They used to spread out like, and sweep the fields as clean as the crownd of your hat. Keepers weren’t no good at all, and besides they never knowed which place us was going to make for. One of the chaps gave I a puppy, and he growed into the finest greyhound as you’d find in a day’s walk. The first time I was took up before the bench I had to go to gaol, because the contractor had broke and the works was stopped, so that my mates hadn’t no money to pay the fine.
‘The dog was took away home to granny by my butty [comrade], but one of the gentlemen as seed it in the court sent his groom over and got it off the old woman for five pound. She thought if I hadn’t the hound I should give it up, and she come and paid me out of gaol. It was a wonder as I didn’t break her neck; only her was a good woman, you see, to I. But I wouldn’t have parted with that hound for a quart-full of sovereigns. Many’s a time I’ve seed his name – they changed his name, of course – in the papers for winning coursing matches. But we let that gent as bought him have it warm: we harried his pheasants and killed the most of ’em.
‘After that I come home, and took to it regular. It ain’t no use unless you do it regular. If a man goes out into the fields now and then chance-like he don’t get much, and is most sure to be caught – very likely in the place of somebody else the keepers were waiting for and as didn’t come. I goes to work every day the same as the rest, only I always take piece-work, which I can come to when I fancy, and stay as late in the evening as suits me with a good excuse. As I knows navigating, I do a main bit of draining and water-furrowing, and I gets good wages all the year round, and never wants for a job. You see, I knows more than the fellows as have never been at nothing but plough.
‘The reason I gets on so well poaching is because I’m always at work out in the fields, except when I goes with the van. I watches everything as goes on, and marks the hares’ tracks and the rabbit buries, and the double mounds and little copses as the pheasants wanders off to in the autumn. I keeps a ’nation good look out after the keeper and his men, and sees their dodges – which way they walks, and how they comes back sudden and unexpected on purpose. There’s mostly one about with his eyes on me – when they see me working on a farm they puts a man special to look after me. I never does nothing close round where I’m at work, so he waits about a main bit for nothing.
‘You see by going out piece-work I visits every farm in the parish. The other men they works for one farmer for two or three or maybe twenty years; but I goes very nigh all round the place – a fortnight here and a week there, and then a month somewhere else. So I knows every hare in the parish, and all his runs and all the double mounds and copses, and the little covers in the corners of the fields. When I be at work on one place I sets my wires about half a mile away on a farm as I ain’t been working on for a month, and where the keeper don’t keep no special look out now I be gone. As I goes all round, I knows the ways of all the farmers, and them as bides out late at night at their friends’ and they as goes to bed early;
and so I knows what paths to follow and what fields I can walk about in and never meet nobody.
‘The dodge is to be always in the fields and to know everybody’s ways. Then you may do just as you be a-mind. All of ’em knows I be a-poaching; but that don’t make no difference for work; I can use my tools, and do it as well as any man in the country, and they be glad to get me on for ’em. They farmers as have got their shooting be sharper than the keepers, and you can’t do much there; but they as haven’t got the shooting don’t take no notice. They sees my wires in the grass, and just looks the other way. If they sees I with a gun I puts un in the ditch till they be gone by, and they don’t look among the nettles.
‘Some of them as got land by the wood would like I to be there all day and night. You see, their clover and corn feeds the hares and pheasants; and then some day when they goes into the market and passes the poultry-shop there be four or five score pheasants a-hanging up with their long tails a-sweeping in the faces of them as fed ’em. The same with the hares and the rabbits; and so they’d just as soon as I had ’em – and a dalled deal sooner – out of spite. Lord bless you! if I was to walk through their courtyards at night with a sack over my shoulders full of you knows what, and met one of ’em, he’d tell his dog to stop that yowling, and go indoors rather than see me. As for the rabbits, they hates they worse than poison. They knocks a hare over now and then themselves on the quiet – bless you! I could tell tales on a main few, but I bean’t such a fellow as that.
‘But you see I don’t run no risk except from the keeper hisself, the men as helps un, and two or three lickspittles as be always messing round after a ferreting job or some wood-cutting, and the Christmas charities. It be enough to make a man sick to see they. This yer parish be a very big un, and a be preserved very high, and I can do three times as much in he as in the next one, as ain’t much preserved. So I sticks to this un.
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