The Pattern Under the Plough

by George Ewart Evans

  1 English Dialects, Cambridge, 1911, pp. 33–4.

  2 Orators.

  3 Third Edition, London, 1877.

  4 P. Hume Brown, History of Scotland, Cambridge, 1909, Vol. III, p. 59.

  5 O.E. helan – to hide, conceal.

  6 Personal communication from A. A. Dent.

  7 Horses covered with armour on breast and flanks; alternatively, a horse decked in an ornamental velvet covering.

  8 Grattan and Singer, op. cit., pp. 34, 197.

  9 James Reeves, The Everlasting Circle, London, 1960, p. 89; see also F.L.H., p. 30.

  10 Mircea Eliade, Chapter 3 in Myth and Mythmaking, New York, 1960.

  11 London, 1954, and 1965.

  12 O.E., motan.

  13 An unqualified or failed mason or craftsman.

  14 The middle of the seventeenth century saw the beginning of a new spirit of scientific and philosophical enquiry in England. The old operative guilds of masons were breaking up and philosophers, or ‘intellectuals’ – Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum was one of the first – joined the masonic guilds; and taking over its ancient ritual and formulae sought to make it a framework for their ideas or speculations about life in general.

  15 G. E. Fussell, From Tolpuddle to T.U.C., Slough, 1948, Chapter III.

  16 See next chapter.

  17 Ronald Rose, op. cit., p. 161, for use of hypnosis in the initiation ceremony.

  24

  The Horseman’s Note-book

  THE horsemen in East Anglia and in north-east Scotland used the same herbs, oils, and chemicals on their horses either to improve their condition or to cure them in sickness: they also used roughly the same drawing and jading oils and substances. Most of these had been handed down orally, but the curing and conditioning herbs and substances used by the old horsemen were common knowledge in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and were included in the receipts of veterinary books printed during that period. But each horseman had his own particular methods and his own lists of herbs and chemicals; and many added to the common store by direct observation of their own horses as did one Suffolk horseman:

  ‘I used to watch my horses when they were in the fields. They whoolly liked to eat some trees. I’d watch ’em going to the hedge and see what trees they’d stop at. Some of my horses used to strip the bark off an oak and some would take to the ellum. Chance times I used to give ’em some of the bark grated up in their bait. It used to make their coats shine like satin.’

  But occasionally a horseman wrote down all the lore he knew in a note-book, or to be more exact most of the lore he knew. For although he would put down the remedies and the herbs, the drawing oils and the jading substances, he purposely left out much of the mode of administering them. So that a beginner or an outsider who would attempt a mechanical application of the instructions in the note-book would soon meet with disaster after giving a horse one of the receipts. The horseman would, for example, not put down in his book that to ensure a particular mixture be administered safely the horse should be allowed no water for a period of twenty-four hours after the mixture was given. The members of the Society of the Horseman’s Word were well aware of these dangers; and the older horsemen instructed the entrant at his initiation not to give a horse any herb, drug, or chemical unless he was under the guidance of one of his experienced brethren. The old horsemen in East Anglia used to give the same kind of warning. Bryony root, or big-root as they called it, is an example. It was used for improving a horse’s condition and making his coat shine; it was scraped and moistened and added to the horse’s bait. But it was a very dangerous herb to use and if too much was given it could have disastrous results. But it had another danger as shown in this mnemonic couplet:1

  Bryony if served to dry

  Blinded horses when they blew.

  Another such conditioning or medicinal herb was saffen or savin (Thomas Tusser recommended it as a cure for botts in horses). It was a tree or shrub, and the leaves were the part used. One horseman describes how he obtained and used the leaves: ‘If I wanted to make my horses’ and colts’ coat look very smart and to make ’em eat I used to go into my boss’s garden and I used to pick out a tree in there. They called it the he yew tree (there’s a she yew tree and a he yew tree: the he was the man I wanted): I used to take a double handful of these leaves or twigs off this tree. Then I wrapped them up in brown paper, and put it underneath my bed and I laid on that for a year under my mattress. When I took it from there it was all dry: it had crumbled up into a fine powder. Well, I mixed this with other stuff and put it on the horse’s bait. It was sometimes a very trying job to get the horse to eat it, because it was rank poison. You could kill a horse in a week if you didn’t know how to use the he yew tree. But my horses’ coats used to shine, my colts they used to eat: they were so fat in the middle they could hardly walk. If you used this stuff right you could make the horse bite the sieve with his food as you carried it up to his manger.’

  This same leaf was also used as a contraceptive as a Cambridgeshire farmer describes: ‘Oh bless my soul! If a stallion leader went round and he found out that you’d got any of that plant, saffen, in your stable he wouldn’t cover your mares; because he’d never get them in foal. I know an old stallion leader once went to … House; and he covered several mares there. Later he went to the governor and told him: “Look! I shan’t cover any more mares for you. ’Cos I know I shall never get them in foal till you make your horse-keeper unlock that corn bin.” You can guess what he had in there, mixed with the horse’s bait. You see, this horse-keeper didn’t want his mares in foal. They were the pride of him, and he didn’t want them in foal so that he’d have to lose them for a time. There was no doubt about it, they’d give ’em this stuff and they could stop a mare from conceiving, just as they could stop a stallion from serving a mare or make a stallion serve a mare as fast as you like.’ This herb saffen was known as the threepenny bit herb in some parts of East Anglia because it was used in a dosage that would no more than cover a silver threepenny piece.

  All this is confirmed from other sources; these horse-leaders were extremely well-informed in all matters connected with breeding. One old stallion leader had a device for getting a ghast or barren mare to conceive: ‘Stand before her with your pocket-knife ready, and just as the stallion is a-seeding thrust the knife into her nostril-not far, about a quarter of an inch. The blood will rush out; but that will do the trick. It will take the mare’s attention off the job the stallion’s a-doing. I tried it once with a retriever bitch that couldn’t have pups. It worked. It’s a trick I learned from my father.’

  Some of the material from the note-book written by a Suffolk horseman over sixty years ago has already been quoted. It is a small black book with about two hundred pages of close, rather laboured writing and twenty-one pen-and-ink drawings as illustrations – Plates the old horseman called them. Most of the first part of the book is concerned with the conduct of the horses, die ‘magic’ material especially. One additional aspect of this is worth quoting, as it deals with a long-standing belief about the toad referred to by Shakespeare.2 But the toad is a special one and was prepared in a special way, according to the horseman who wrote in his note-book: ‘As for the maginet [magnetic] powers as I gouted [quoted] before I cannot thourly understand of what its qualitys realy consist of. But it is gouted that there is a verey powerful quality of this kind in the different spiceis of toad. I have the history as thus. Take a ground toad and put it in a leather Bag full of holes. Lay it in an ant hill; and they will eat the toad. You will then find a Stone in the Bag. Place the Stone on a greaved [aggrieved] part of man that is outwardly poisoned and it will expel the poison. And if a man is inwardly poisoned let him Breath on the stone and it will Expel it.’

  The toadstone was the popular name for bufonite, the fossilized teeth of fish often found in oolite and chalk formations. The stone was once supposed to be a natural growth in the head of the common toad. This was one of the ‘Vul
gar Errors’ which Sir Thomas Browne the Norwich physician exposed in the seventeenth century; and the fact that the belief was still going strong in the same region over two hundred years later shows how far the exposure of error often lies from its subsequent removal.

  A further passage in the book provides a note to another reference in Shakespeare. One, at least, of the readers of Hamlet always assumed that the killing of the king by Claudius’s pouring of ‘cursed hebenon into the porches of his ears’ was more a poetic adumbration of a murder than an exact description. But it appears that drugs and poisons were once administered through the membrane of the middle ear:

  To Still the Horse from Kicking by Druging him

  Drop 4 or 5 drops of … into his ear, or make a nott of tow and drop a few drops of the essence of … on it; and put it into his ear. And the oil of rhodium up his nostrils and the oil of asp.

  Or put 5 drops of … in each ear. Will make him work kindly.

  *

  The horseman who forsook the frog’s bone because of his doubts about its associations afterwards took to the cords which were often used, he reported, in the circus. These were strong but very thin cords which prevented the horse’s free movement. One of the most effective of the cords was the one which was passed through the horse’s mouth and up at the side of his head. There it was attached to a gagging iron, a small – usually blacksmith made – device which enabled the horseman to tighten the cord by pulling on one end of it and loosen it by pulling on the other. This cord was, if possible, the same colour as the horse’s coat; and as the gagging iron was concealed under the dutfin or bridle the device would pass unnoticed except in the closest inspection. The horseman devoted a large part of his carefully compiled book to the control and training of the horse by cords. He also used what he called pillows [pillars] for training young colts. These are two wooden posts set firmly, two or three feet apart, in the ground: the young horse is tied between the posts and conditioned to respond to certain signals. It is likely that the old horseman took some of his material for training horses by means of cords from equestrian manuals of the last century; for the methods he used and the diagrams he drew to illustrate them indicate that he had been influenced by the training of the Lipizzaners, the horses of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

  One section of the horseman’s note-book draws attention to a very old sport in which Suffolk horses excelled. This was the drawing match,3 a contest of a horse’s strength in drawing or pulling heavy loads. The following advertisement is in the Ipswich Journal of 22nd May, 1742:

  Notice is Hereby given

  That on Friday the 28th of this Instant May, at the sign of the Lion and Castle at Theberton, alias East Bridge, in the county of Suffolk will be given gratis:

  FIVE DUTFINS of Forty Shillings Value to be drawn for by any five Horses, Mares or Geldings harness’d together to draw Twenty Pulls upon the Rein; and they that make the fewest Blanks and carry out the biggest weight to win the Prize; to enter their names by Ten of the clock in the Forenoon at the Place and Day aforesaid.

  *

  This sport was in its hey-day in the eighteenth century but the following entry shows that it lasted well into the following century. The horsemen taught the Suffolk Punch specially to go down onto his knees to exert his full strength in a dead pull; that is, in pulling a loaded tumbril or wagon that had its wheel blocked by an obstacle to make the pull more difficult.

  To Learn Young Horses Game of Drawing

  First learn him to go down on his knees. Then put him into a long pair of traice. Chain him to a tree. Take the traice off the shoulder hook. Tie a peice of cord on each side of the bit and tie it to the traice. Touch his flank and his knees till he go down. Then whip him over the wallows till he draw kindly. Give him comfort and coax him on the neck with the whip. And give him a little corn and leave him with a feed of corn.

  In the section of the book dealing with control the horseman shows that he used all methods – drawing oils, cords and psychology or horse-sense to discipline a particularly vicious horse. He advises: ‘Avoid throwing them if you can: avoid all harsh punishment as much as you can. Use judgement, justtice and mercey, and teatch them to fear, love and obey. When the horse is travling, mind you do not lead him with a Bit to long that he don’t like. Change his Bits, and when you find he goes Comfortable lead him with that Bit as often as you can. Never pinch his mouth aney more than you can help. If you do he will take a dislike to you, and he will never go Comfortable with you aney more.

  ‘To make him fond and to know you aney where, take half a pound of Lunarce and a half pound of oat flour mixed with treacle or honey. Make them into Cakes and Slack bake them. Sweat them well under your arm. Let him get hungrey. Then give him the Cakes with a few drops of this mixture: oil of Rhodium, Cumin, otto of rose, Essences of new mown hay, and the Essence of Helletropium. Give a few drops on the Cakes. Let him eat them. He will never leave you; and if he is a little upset at aney time when he is travling, as often is the case, give him a ginger Bread Cake with a few drops of the oils, or on a peice of loaf sugar.’

  And at the bottom of this page which marked the end of his section on control of horses he wrote:

  ‘It is no use of writeing aney more on this subject, as you have erithmitic of horses Enough to master all the horses in the world with practice, patience and gennarl study: these are the three things most wantin.’

  A SUFFOLK HORSEMAN’S DRAWINGS

  1 Mrs Phoebe Lockwood, Thorndon, Suffolk.

  2 Sweet are the uses of adversity

  Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

  Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. As You Like It, II:1.

  3 A.F.C.H., pp. 123–6.

  Conclusion

  FIRST of all I should like to re-affirm my conviction-arrived at after six years’ work in collecting and attempting to order material for the present book – that the folk-life approach to the old rural society in Britain is the most fruitful one at the present time. If the separate disciplines continue to investigate the past of rural Britain each in its own way, much will be lost irrecoverably. I hold this view chiefly for two reasons: first, according to the evidence in the preceding pages, the old rural community was essentially the true remnant of a primitive society that has lasted since prehistoric times. And in writing primitive I am not making a value-judgment and using the word as a synonym for backward; for it is undeniable that in certain aspects of living some primitive societies were very much forward compared with modern western civilization. The word as used here implies that it was a different society from the modern one, characterized by an essentially different mode of production whose supplanting also meant the end of the social structure that it supported. The antecedents of the old rural economy in its material aspects have been exhaustively studied, but all that the anthropologist implies in his objective use of the word primitive has been almost entirely ignored by the historian in Britain. This is a great hiatus in the study of rural history. Marc Bloch recognized this need in France and pointed out:1 ‘The study of popular rites and beliefs is barely sketching its first outlines.’ Yet it is not simply a question of the historian’s acquiring the technique to incorporate a new field into his study but the more difficult one of his coming to recognize that a problem exists at all, and of admitting that here is material that should be embraced by his discipline, and that by leaving it out he is exposing himself to the charge of giving a totally incomplete view of the historical rural scene. But in my experience most rural historians are not concerned with giving a true picture of their field of study but merely a safely accurate one. And if I am challenged to explain the difference between truth and accuracy I have politely to disclaim any qualification to engage in semantic or philosophical dispute and instead to offer a crude tale which has been told before but nevertheless bears telling again as it points the difference between truth and accuracy reasonably well enough.

  The captain of an east coast trading vessel put i
nto Lowestoft and told his mate he could go ashore. The mate went; and later the captain recorded in his log-book: Mate drunk all day. About a week later the vessel docked at Hull. This time it was the captain’s turn to have a day off, and the mate’s turn at the log-book. In this, as soon as opportunity offered itself, he wrote in a bold, uncompromising hand: Captain sober all day. Now we can consider the first statement, Mate drunk all day, true because he went ashore presumably to enjoy himself, and out of boredom or definite purpose got himself drunk. But as it stands the statement is not quite accurate, for apart from the sober intervals he experienced while attaining his purpose he must have been sober to start with or else the captain would not have allowed him ashore. But the second statement, Captain sober all day, was dead accurate but quite untrue because it was so obviously false in its implications. It was in fact a specialized statement carried to extreme. For what is specialization but the making of finely accurate statements out of a context; statements that need constant re-examination against this context not simply for accuracy but for a concinnity – the truth if you like – that accuracy of itself does not possess? This, however, is not to be obscurantist and to attack specialization in historical studies or elsewhere; we have to specialize, and specialization is patently the most effective means of pushing forward exploration in any discipline. But it will only remain so, especially in the social studies, as long as we do not deceive ourselves into assuming that the divisions or separations we create for our convenience have any real validity beyond our own making. This needs to be said particularly about rural history because so much of it has been written within the last twenty years. Tracts of it have been surveyed and charted over and over again, especially the Middle Ages; and yet it is difficult to recognize the countryside and country people in much of these writings. This, I suppose, is because the present-day historian on the whole tends to leave men out of the picture, and historical studies have been so reified that there is now little life in them; and, what is more serious, no life is really expected of them. Theses and scholarly monographs lie about the landscape like accurately cut and beautifully trimmed blocks of stone – ashlars that will be built into no tower, details that will never be lifted off the ground and included in any design, knowledge that has never aspired to nor never will attain that collective wisdom which is knowledge’s only justification.