farm-servants.

the clown, the child of nature, without guile,

blessed with an infant’s ignorance of all

but his own simple pleasures; now and then

a wrestling match, a foot-race, or a fair.—cowper.

we have in a preceding chapter, taken a view of the english farmer. we have seen him at market—in his fields, and in his house receiving his friends to a holiday feast. if we were to go to the farm-house on any other day, and at any season of the year, and survey the farmer and his men in their daily and ordinary course of life, we should always see something to interest us; and we should have to contemplate a mode of existence forming a strong contrast to that of townsmen; and, notwithstanding the innovation which the progress of modern habits has made on life in the country, still presenting a picture of simplicity, homeliness, and quiet, which no other life retains. thousands, indeed, looking into a farm-house, surveying its furniture, the apparatus and supply of its table, the manners and the language of its inhabitants, would wonder where, after all, was the vast change said to have taken place in the habits of the agricultural population. o! rude and antiquated enough in all conscience, are hundreds of our farm-houses and their inmates, in many an obscure district of merry england yet. the spots are not difficult to be found even now, where the old oak table, with legs as thick and black as those of an elephant, is spread in the homely house-place, for the farmer and his family—wife, children, servants, male and female; and is heaped with the rude plenty of beans and bacon, beef and cabbage,[108] fried potatoes and bacon, huge puddings with “dip” as it is called, that is, sauce of flour, butter, and water boiled, sharpened with vinegar or verjuice, and sweetened with brown sugar or more economical molasses—“dip,” so called, no doubt, because all formerly dipped their morsel into it; a table where bread and cheese, and beer, and good milk porridge and oatmeal porridge, or stirabout, still resist the introduction of tea and coffee and such trash, as the stout old husbandman terms it. let no one say that modern language and modern habits have driven away the ancient rusticity, while such dialogues between the farmer and guest as the following may be heard—and such may yet be heard in the peak of derbyshire, where this really passed.

farmer at table to his guest.—ite, mon, ite!

guest.—au have iten, mon. au’ve iten till au’m weelly brussen.

farmer.—then ite, and brust thee out mon: au wooden we hadden to brussen thee wee.[2]

[2] this is the present genuine dialect of the peak, and is nearly as pure saxon. it is curious to see in the southern agricultural counties, how the old saxon terms are worn out by a greater intercourse with london and townspeople, although the people themselves have a most saxon look, with their fair complexions and light brown hair; while, as you proceed northward, the saxon becomes more and more prevalent in the country dialects. in the midland counties bracken is the common term for fern—in the south not a peasant ever heard it. the dialects of derbyshire, nottinghamshire, and staffordshire, are so similar to that of the sassenach of scotland, the lowland scots, that the language of burns was nearly as familiar to me when i first read his poems, as that of my village neighbours; and the scotch read that clever romance of low life, “bilberry thurland,” with a great relish, the dialogues of which are genuine nottinghamshire, because they said, it was such good scotch. i have noticed that the plays of the boys in derbyshire and in the scotch lowlands have similar names, differing from the english names in general; as the english game of bandy, in derbyshire is shinny, in scotland shinty.

it is no rare sight to see the farmer himself, with his clouted shoon and his fustian coat, ribbed blue or black worsted stockings, and breeches of corduroy; to see him arousing his household, at five o’clock of a morning, and his wife hurrying the servant-wenches, as they call them, from their beds, crying,—“up, up, boulder-heads!” that is pebble-heads, or heavy-heads, and asking them if they mean to lie till the sun burns their eyes out; having them up to light fires, sweep the hearth, and get to milking,[109] cheese-making, churning, and what not; while he gets his men and boys to their duties,—in winter, to fodder the horses and cows, and prepare for ploughing, or carting out manure; to supply the “young beast,”—young cattle, in the straw-yard with food; to chop turnips, carrots, mangel-würzel, cut hay, boil potatoes for feeding pigs or bullocks; thrash, winnow, or sack corn. in summer, to be off to the harvest-field. the wife is ready to take a turn at the churn, or to turn up her gown-sleeves to the shoulders, and kneeling down on a straw cushion, to press the sweet curd to the bottom of the cheese-pan. to boil the whey for making whey butter, to press the curd into the cheese-vats; place the new cheese in the press; to salt and turn, and look after those cheeses which are in the different stages of the progress from perfect newness and white softness, to their investment with the unctuous coating of a goodly age. he is ready to go with the men into the farm; she is ready to see that the calves are properly fed, and to bargain with the butcher for the fat ones; to feed her geese, turkeys, guinea-fowls, and barn-door fowls; to see after the collection of eggs; how the milk is going on in the dairy, the cream churning, and moulding of butter for sale. in some counties, especially in the west of england, numerous are those homely and most useful dames that you see mounted on their horses with nothing but a flat pad, or a stuffed sack under them, jogging to market to dispose of the products of their dairy and poultry yard, as fresh, hale, and independent, as their grandmothers were. as to the farmer himself, he can hold the plough as his father did before him. he hates your newfangled notions; he despises your fine-fingered chaps, that are brought up at boarding-schools till they are fit for nothing but to ride on smart whisk-tailed nags to market, and carry a bit of a sample-bag in their pockets; and had rather, ten times, be off to the hunt or the race-course than to market at all; or to be running after a dog and gun, breaking down fences and trampling over turnip and potato crops, when they ought to be watching that other idlers did not commit such depredations. he sits with his men, and works with his men; and, while he does as much as the best of them—follows the plough, the harrow, or the drill, empties the manure-cart on his fallows, loads the hay or the corn-wagon,—he many a[110] time says to himself that the “master’s eye does still more than his hand.” the celebrated mr. robinson of cambridge, who was fond of farming, gives in a letter to a friend, a most striking view of the perpetual recurrence of the little occupations which present themselves to the practical farmer, and however apparently trivial, are really important, and full of pleasure to those whose hearts are in such pursuit.—“rose at three o’clock; crawled into the library, and met one who said,—‘work while ye have the light; the night cometh, when no man can work: my father worketh hitherto, and i work.’ rang the great bell, and roused the girls to milking, went up to the farm, roused the horsekeeper, fed the horses while he was getting up; called the boy to suckle the calves and clean out the cow-house; lighted the pipe, walked round the garden to see what was wanted there; went up to the paddock to see if the weaning calves were well; went down to the ferry to see if the boy had scooped and cleaned the boat; returned to the farm, examined the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff and corn of eight horses going to plough, mended the acre-staff, cut some thongs, whip-corded the plough-boys’ whips, pumped the troughs full, saw the hogs fed, examined the swill-tubs, and then the cellar; ordered a quarter of malt, for the hogs want grains, and the men want beer; filled the pipe again, returned to the river, and bought a lighter of turf for dairy fires, and another of sedge for ovens; hunted out the wheelbarrows, and set them a trundling; returned to the farm, called the men to breakfast, and cut the boys’ bread and cheese, and saw the wooden bottles filled; sent one plough to the three roods, another to the three half-acres, and so on; shut the gates, and the clock struck five; breakfasted; set two men to ditch the five roods, two men to chop sods, and spread about the land, two more to throw up manure in the yard, and three men and six women to weed wheat; set on the carpenter to repair cow-cribs, and set them up till winter; the wheeler, to mend the old carts, cart-ladders, rakes, etc., preparatory to hay-time and harvest; walked to the six-acres, found hogs in the grass, went back and set a man to hedge and thorn; sold the butcher a fat calf and the suckler a lean one.—the clock strikes nine; walked into the barley-field; barleys fine—picked off a few tiles and stones, and cut a few thistles; the peas fine but foul; the charlock must be[111] topped; the tares doubtful, the fly seems to have taken them; prayed for rain, but could not see a cloud; came round to the wheat-field, wheats rather thin, but the finest colour in the world; sent four women on to the shortest wheats; ordered one man to weed along the ridge of the long wheats, and two women to keep rank and file with him in the furrows; thistles many, blue-bottles no end; traversed all the wheat-field, came to the fallow-field; the ditchers have run crooked, set them straight; the flag sods cut too much, the rush sods too little, strength wasted, shew the men how to three-corner them; laid out more work for the ditchers, went to the ploughs, set the foot a little higher, cut a wedge, set the coulter deeper, must go and get a new mould-board against to-morrow; went to the other plough, gathered up some wood and tied over the traces, mended a horse-tree, tied a thong to the plough-hammer, went to see which lands wanted ploughing first, sat down under a bush, wondered how any man could be so silly as to call me reverend; read two verses in the bible of the loving-kindness of the lord in the midst of his temple, hummed a tune of thankfulness, rose up, whistled, the dogs wagged their tails, and away we went, dined, drunk some milk and fell asleep, woke by the carpenter for some slats which the sawyers must cut, etc. etc.”

so spends many a farmer of the old stamp his day, and at night he takes his seat on the settle, under the old wide chimney—his wife has her little work-table set near—the “wenches” darning their stockings, or making up a cap for sunday, and the men sitting on the other side of the hearth, with their shoes off. he now enjoys of all things, to talk over his labours and plans with the men,—they canvass the best method of doing this and that—lay out the course of to-morrow—what land is to be broke up, or laid down; where barley, wheat, oats, etc. shall be sown, or if they be growing, when they shall be cut. in harvest-time, lambing-time, in potato setting and gathering time, in fact, almost all summer long, there is no sitting on the hearth—it is out of bed with the sun, and after the long hard day—supper, and to bed again. it is only in winter that there is any sitting by the fire, which is seldom diversified further than by the coming in of a neighbouring farmer, or the reading of the weekly news.

such is the rustic, plodding life of many a farmer in england,[112] and there is no part of the population for which so little has been done, and of which so little is thought, as of their farm-servants. scarcely any of these got any education before the establishment of sunday schools—how few of them do yet, compared with the working population of towns? the girls help their mothers—the labourers’ wives—in their cottages, as soon almost as they can waddle about. they are scarcely more than infants themselves, when they are set to take care of other infants. the little creatures go lugging about great fat babies that really seem as heavy as themselves. you may see them on the commons, or little open green spots in the lanes near their homes, congregating together, two or three juvenile nurses, with their charges, carrying them along, or letting them roll on the sward, while they try to catch a few minutes of play with one another, or with that tribe of bairns at their heels—too old to need nursing, and too young to begin nursing others. as they get bigger they are found useful in the house—they mop and brush, and feed the pig, and run to the town for things; and as soon as they get to ten or twelve, out they go to nurse at the farm-houses; a little older, they “go to service;” there they soon aspire to be dairymaids, or housemaids, if their ambition does not prompt them to seek places in the towns,—and so they go on scrubbing and scouring, and lending a hand in the harvest-field, till they are married to some young fellow, who takes a cottage and sets up day-labourer. this is their life; and the men’s is just similar. as soon as they can run about, they are set to watch a gate that stands at the end of the lane or the common to stop cattle from straying, and there through long solitary days they pick up a few halfpence by opening it for travellers. they are sent to scare birds from corn just sown, or just ripening, where

they stroll, the lonely crusoes of the fields—

as bloomfield has beautifully described them from his own experience. they help to glean, to gather potatoes, to pop beans into holes in dibbling time, to pick hops, to gather up apples for the cider-mill, to gather mushrooms and blackberries for market, to herd flocks of geese, or young turkeys, or lambs at weaning time; they even help to drive sheep to market, or to the wash at shearing[113] time; they can go to the town with a huge pair of clouted ancle-boots to be mended, as you may see them trudging along over the moors, or along the footpath of the fields, with the strings of the boots tied together, and slung over the shoulder—one boot behind and the other before; and then they are very useful to lift and carry about the farm-yard, to shred turnips, or beet-root—to hold a sack open—to bring in wood for the fire, or to rear turfs for drying on the moors, as the man cuts them with his paring shovel, or to rear peat-bricks for drying. they are mighty useful animals in their day and generation, and as they get bigger, they successively learn to drive plough, and then to hold it; to drive the team, and finally to do all the labours of a man. that is the growing up of a farm-servant. all this time he is learning his business, but he is learning nothing else,—he is growing up into a tall, long, smock-frocked, straw-hatted, ancle-booted fellow, with a gait as graceful as one of his own plough-bullocks. he has grown up, and gone to service; and there he is, as simple, as ignorant, and as laborious a creature as one of the wagon-horses that he drives. the mechanic sees his weekly newspaper over his pipe and pot; but the clodhopper, the chopstick, the hawbuck, the hind, the johnny-raw, or by whatever name, in whatever district, he may be called, is every where the same; he sees no newspaper, and if he did, he could not read it; and if he hears his master reading it, ten to one but he drops asleep over it. in fact, he has no interest in it. he knows there is such a place as the next town, for he goes there to statutes, and to the fair; and he has heard of lunnon, and the french, and buonaparte, and of late years of america, and he has some dreamy notion that he should like to go there if he could raise the wind, and thought he could find the way—and that is all that he knows of the globe and its concerns, beyond his own fields. the mechanic has his library, and he reads, and finds that he has a mind, and a hundred tastes and pleasures that he never dreamed of before; the clodhopper has no library, and if he had, books in his present state would be to him only so many things set on end upon shelves. he is as much of an animal as air and exercise, strong living and sound sleeping, can make him, and he is nothing more. just see the daily course of his life. harvest-time is the jubilee of his year. it is a time of incessant and hurrying occupation—but that is a[114] benefit to him—it is an excitement, and he wants exciting. it rouses him out of that beclouded and unimaginative dreamy state in which he stalks along the solitary fields, or wields the flail in the barn; digs the drain or the ditch, or plashes the fence, from day to day and week to week. the energies that he has, and they are chiefly physical, are all called forth. he is in a bustle. the weather is fine and warm—his blood flows quicker. the gates are thrown open—the hay rustles in the meadow, or the golden corn stands in shock amid the stubble: the wagons are rattling along the lanes and the fields. his neighbours are all called out to assist. the labourers leave every thing else, and are all in the harvest-field. the women leave their cottages, and are there too. young, middle-aged, and old,—all are there, to work or to glean. the comely maiden with her rosy face, her beaming eyes, and fair figure, brings with her mirth and joke. the stout village matrons have drawn footless stockings on their arms to protect them from the sun and stubble—they have pinned up their bed-gowns behind, or doffed themselves to the brown stays and linsey-woolsey petticoat, and are amongst the best hands in the field. even the old are feebly pulling at a rake, or putting hay into wain-row, or looking on, and telling what they have done in their time. the beer-keg is in the field, and the horn often goes round. the lunch is eaten under the tree, or amongst the sheaves. in the house at noon, there is a great setting out of dinner; beans and bacon, huge puddings and dumplings are plentiful,—it is a joyous and a stirring time. there is no other season of the year in which the farm-servant enjoys himself so much as in harvest; not even in his few other days of relaxation—on his visit to the fair, to the statutes, to the ploughing match, or on mothering sunday, when all the “servant-lads” and “servant-wenches” are, in some parts of the country, set at liberty for a day, to go and see their mothers. see him at any other time, and what a plodding, simple, monotonous life he leads! he rises at an early hour—we have seen in this chapter at what an hour the rev. mr. robinson had his men up;—if he be going to work in the farm-yard, he goes out and gets to it till breakfast-time: but if he be going to plough, or to do work at a distance, or to carry corn home that has been sold at market by his master, or to fetch bones, rape-dust, or other manure from the[115] town, or coals from the pit, he is up, whether it be summer or winter, at an hour at which townspeople are often not gone to bed. in early spring, and autumn he gets up to plough at five and six o’clock in a morning. it is pitch dark, and dismally cold. he strikes a light with his tinder, for lucifers he never saw, and has only heard of, as a horrible invention for setting ricks on fire. he slips on his ancle-boots without lacing them, and out he goes to fodder his horses, and rub them down. that done, he comes in again.

the “servant wench” has lit the fire and set out his breakfast for him and his fellows; huge basins of milk porridge, and loaves as big as beehives, and pretty much of the same shape, and as brown as the back of their own hands. to this fare he betakes himself with a capacity that only country air and hard labour can give. having made havoc with as much of these as would serve a round family of citizens to breakfast, he then stretches out his hand to a capacious dish of cold fat bacon of about six inches thick; nay, i once saw bacon on such a table actually ten inches thick, and all one solid mass of fat. this is set on the top of half a peck of cold boiled beans that were left the day before, and however strange such viands might seem to a townsman at six o’clock, or earlier, in a morning, they vanish as rapidly as if they did not follow that mess of porridge, and those huge hunches of bread. well, to a certainty he has now done. nay, don’t be in such haste—he has not done; he has his eye on the great brown loaf again. he must have a snack of bread and cheese; so he takes his knife out of his waistcoat pocket, a gigantic clasp knife, assuredly made by the knowing sheffielder to hew down such loaves, and lie in such pockets, and fill such stomachs, and for no other earthly purpose. see! he cuts a massy fragment of the rich curly kissing-crust, that hangs like a fretted cornice from the upper half of the loaf, and places it between the little finger and the thick of his left hand; he cuts a corresponding piece of cheese, and places it between the thumb and the two fore-fingers of the same hand, and alternately cutting his bread and cheese with his clasp-knife (for he would not use another for that purpose on any account), as betty sets a mug of ale before him, he wipes his mouth and says, as he lifts the mug, to his younger companion, who has all this time been faithfully[116] and valiantly imitating him,—“well, jack, we must be off, lad; take a draught, then get the horses out, and i’ll be with thee.”

this is pretty well for five or six o’clock in a morning; but it is quite as likely that it is only one or two in the morning, as it certainly is, if he be going to a distance with a load, or for a load of any thing. the breakfast is as liberally handled, and betty mean time has put up their luncheons or “ten-o’clocks”—huge masses of bread and cheese, or cold bacon, or cold meat, and a bottle of ale if they are going to plough. having now breakfasted, he has only to lace his boots, which he generally does in the most inconvenient posture, and not before he has filled himself till it is tenfold additionally inconvenient—so with a face into which all the blood in his body seems to rush, and with many a grunt, he accomplishes his task, and away he goes;—his whip cracks, his gears jingle, his wagon rumbles, and he is gone. if, however, he be going to plough, he will duly about eleven o’clock lunch under a tree, while his horses rest and eat their hay; and then, at three or four o’clock, he will loose them from the plough, and return home to a dinner as plentiful as his breakfast; his horses are fed, and he goes to bed. if he be going out with corn, or for coals, he is off, as i have said, probably by two o’clock, and in his wagon he duly takes with him a truss of hay and a truss of straw. the hay is for his horses to eat at some wayside public-house, and the straw is for payment for their standing in the stable. the straw is worth a shilling, and in some places, at certain seasons, eighteen-pence. if he does not take straw, he takes a shilling in money. he carries his luncheon and eats it in the alehouse, and he has a shilling for himself and companion to drink, and treat the hostler. this is a custom as old as farms and corn-mills themselves. if it be winter weather, you shall meet him, probably, with straw-bands wrapped round his legs, or even round his hat for warmth; and in heavy rain his macintosh is a sack-bag, which he throws over his shoulders, and goes on defying the weather for a whole day. in sudden squalls and thunder showers in summer, you may see him, and frequently a whole cluster of harvesters, take shelter under his wagon till the storm is over. by the evening fire, in some farm-houses, they mend their shoes, or shape and polish the heads of flails which they have[117] cut from the black-thorn bush, and have had in a loft or under their bed seasoning for the last six months, or they get into some horse-play, or they doze

till chilblains wake them, or the snapping fire.

and on sundays they go to church in the morning to get a quiet nod. perhaps it is to them that the apostle alludes when he says—“and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” for the only chance of their worship seems to be in their dreams—the daily exposure to the air on the six days making them as drowsy as bats on the seventh. in the afternoon they lean over gates, or play at quoits:—and there is the life of a farmer man-servant, till he is metamorphosed into a labourer by marrying and setting up his cottage, finding himself, and receiving weekly instead of yearly wages. such is the farm-servant, whether you see him in his white, his blue, his tawny, or his olive-green smock-frock, in his straw-hat, or his wide-awake, according to the prevailing fashion of different parts of the country—and truly, seeing him and his fellows, we may ask with wordsworth—

what kindly warmth from touch of fostering hand,

what penetrating power of sun or breeze

shall e’er dissolve the crust wherein his soul

sleeps, like a caterpillar sheathed in ice?

this torpor is no pitiable work

of modern ingenuity; no town

or crowded city may be taxed with aught

of sottish vice, or desperate breach of law,

to which in after years he may be roused.

this boy the fields produce:—his spade and hoe—

the carter’s whip that on his shoulder rests,

in air high-towering with a boorish pomp,

the sceptre of his sway: his country’s name,

her equal rights, her churches and her schools—

what have they done for him? and, let me ask,

for tens of thousands, uninformed as he?[3]

[118]

[3] who would believe it, that such is the profound ignorance amongst the peasantry even of the cumberland hills—amongst that peasantry where wordsworth himself has found his michaels, his matthews, and many another man and woman that in his hands have become classical and enduring specimens of rustic heart and mind, that such facts as the following could occur, and yet this did occur there not very long ago. the “statesmen,” that is, small proprietors there, are a people very little susceptible of religious excitement; and, we may believe, have, in past years, been very much neglected by their natural instructors. you hear of no “revivals” amongst them, and the methodists have little success amongst them. some person, speaking with the wife of one of these “statesmen” on religious subjects, found that she had not even heard of such a person as jesus christ! astonished at the discovery, he began to tell her of his history; of his coming to save the world, and of his being put to death. having listened to all this very attentively, she inquired where this occured; and that being answered, she asked, “and when was it?” this being also told her, she very gravely observed—“well, its sae far off, and sae lang since, we’ll fain believe that it isna true!”