red roof rises high above the hedges, and the line of its ridge is seen
every way through the trees. With this old barn, as with so much of the
architecture of former times, the roof is the most important part. The
gables, for instance, of Elizabethan houses occupy the eye far more than
the walls; and so, too, with the antique halls that still exist. The
roof of this old barn is itself the building; the roof and the doors,
for the sweeping slope of the tiles comes down within reach of the hand,
while the great doors extend half-way to the ridge.
By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has been spilt, and has
blown out and mingles with the dust of the road. Loose straws lie across
the footpath, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have wandered across
the road and lodged on the mound, and others have roamed still farther
round the corner. Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the
rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are borne up by the
nettles beneath it.
Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, both on the top and
following the lines of the mortar, and bunches of wall grasses flourish
along the top. The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the
rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants, many of which,
dropping to the ground, come up next year. The trodden earth round where
the ricks stood seems favourable to their early appearance; the first
poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler than those which come
afterwards in the fields.
In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and sold, but there
remains the vast pile of straw--always straw--and the three-cornered
stump of a hay-rick which displays bands of different hues, one above
the other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of the hay was put
up damp, some in good condition, and some had been browned by bad
weather before being carted.
About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that everywhere strews the
earth, numerous fowls search, and by the gateway Chanticleer proudly
stands, tall and upright, the king of the rickyard still, as he and his
ancestors have been these hundreds of years. Under the granary, which is
built on stone staddles, to exclude the mice, some turkeys are huddled
together calling occasionally for a "halter," and beyond them the green,
glossy neck of a drake glistens in the sunshine.
When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is well up, the doors of
the barn are daily open, and shock-headed children peer over the hatch.
There are others within playing and tumbling on a heap of straw--always
straw--which is their bed at night. The sacks which form their
counterpane are rolled aside, and they have half the barn for their
nursery. If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother will be
there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where they can see all that goes
along the road.
A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable field, the very windiest
and most draughty that could be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so
that it can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms draw the wind,
the men of the family crowd over a smoky fire. In the wind and rain the
fire could not burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped up a
hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As it is there seems no
flame, only white embers and a flow of smoke, into which the men from
time to time cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the pot is
boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe distance from the litter
and straw of the rickyard.
These people are Irish, who come year after year to the same barn for
the hoeing and the harvest, travelling from the distant West to gather
agricultural wages on the verge of the metropolis.
In fine summer weather, beside the usual business traffic, there goes
past this windy bare corner a constant stream of pleasure-seekers,
heavily laden four-in-hands, tandems, dog-carts, equestrians, and open
carriages, filled with well-dressed ladies. They represent the abundant
gold of trade and commerce. In their careless luxury they do not
notice--how should they?--the smoky fire in the barren corner, or the
shock-headed children staring at the equipages over the hatch at the
barn.
Within a mile there is a similar fire, which by day is not noticeable,
because the spot is under a hedge two meadows back from the road. At
night it shows brightly, and even as late as eleven o'clock dusky
figures may be seen about it, as if the family slept in the open air. A
third fire is kept up in the same neighbourhood, but in a different
direction, in a meadow bordering on a lonely lane. There is a thatched
shed behind the hedge, which is the sleeping-place--the fire burns some
forty yards away. Still another shines at night in an open arable field,
where is a barn.
One day I observed a farmer's courtyard completely filled with groups of
men, women, and children, who had come travelling round to do the
harvesting. They had with them a small cart or van--not of the kind
which the show folk use as movable dwellings, but for the purpose of
carrying their pots, pans, and the like. The greater number carry their
burdens on their backs, trudging afoot.
A gang of ten or twelve once gathered round me to inquire the direction
of some spot they desired to reach. A powerful-looking woman, with
reaping-hook in her hand and cooking implements over her shoulder, was
the speaker. The rest did not appear to know a word of English, and her
pronunciation was so peculiar that it was impossible to understand what
she meant except by her gestures. I suppose she wanted to find a farm,
the name of which I could not get at, and then perceiving she was not
understood her broad face flushed red and she poured out a flood of
Irish in her excitement. The others chimed in, and the din redoubled. At
last I caught the name of a town and was thus able to point the way.
About harvest time it is common to meet an Irish labourer dressed in the
national costume: a tall, upright fellow with a long-tailed coat,
breeches, and worsted stockings. He walks as upright as if drilled, with
a quick easy gait and springy step, quite distinct from the Saxon stump.
When the corn is cut these bivouac fires go out, and the camp
disappears, but the white ashes remain, and next season the smoke will
rise again.
The barn here with its broad red roof, and the rickyard with the stone
staddles, and the litter of chaff and straw, is the central rendezvous
all the year of the resident labourers. Day by day, and at all hours,
there is sure to be some of them about the place. The stamp of the land
is on them. They border on the city, but are as distinctly agricultural
and as immediately recognisable as in the heart of the country. This
sturdy carter, as he comes round the corner of the straw-rick, cannot be
mistaken.
He is short and thickly set, a man of some fifty years, but hard and
firm of make. His face is broad and red, his shiny fat cheeks almost as
prominent as his stumpy nose, likewise red and shiny. A fringe of
reddish whiskers surrounds his chin like a cropped hedge. The eyes are
small and set deeply, a habit of half-closing the lids when walking in
the teeth of the wind and rain has caused them to appear still smaller.
The wrinkles at the corners and the bushy eyebrows are more visible and
pronounced than the eyes themselves, which are mere bright grey points
twinkling with complacent good humour.
These red cheeks want but the least motion to break into a smile; the
action of opening the lips to speak is sufficient to give that
expression. The fur cap he wears allows the round shape of his head to
be seen, and the thick neck which is the colour of a brick. He trudges
deliberately round the straw-rick: there is something in the style of
the man which exactly corresponds to the barn, and the straw, and the
stone staddles, and the waggons. Could we look back three hundred years,
just such a man would be seen in the midst of the same surroundings,
deliberately trudging round the straw-ricks of Elizabethan days, calm
and complacent though the Armada be at hand. There are the ricks just
the same, here is the barn, and the horses are in good case; the wheat
is coming on well. Armies may march, but these are the same.
When his waggon creaks along the road towards the town his eldest lad
walks proudly by the leader's head, and two younger boys ride in the
vehicle. They pass under the great elms; now the sunshine and now the
shadow falls upon them; the horses move with measured step and without
haste, and both horses and human folks are content in themselves.
As you sit in summer on the beach and gaze afar over the blue waters
scarcely flecked with foam, how slowly the distant ship moves along the
horizon. It is almost, but not quite, still. You go to lunch and return,
and the vessel is still there; what patience the man at the wheel must
have. So, now, resting here on the stile, see the plough yonder,
travelling as it were with all sails set.
Three shapely horses in line draw the share. The traces are taut, the
swing-tree like a yard braced square, the helmsman at the tiller bears
hard upon the stilts. But does it move? The leading horse, seen distinct
against the sky, lifts a hoof and places it down again, stepping in the
last furrow made. But then there is a perceptible pause before the next
hoof rises, and yet again a perceptible delay in the pull of the
muscles. The stooping ploughman walking in the new furrow, with one foot
often on the level and the other in the hollow, sways a little with the
lurch of his implement, but barely drifts ahead.
While watched they scarcely move; but now look away for a time and on
returning the plough itself and the lower limbs of the ploughman and
the horses are out of sight. They have gone over a slope, and are "hull
down"; a few minutes more, and they disappear behind the ridge. Look
away again and read or dream, as you would on the beach, and then, see,
the head and shoulders of the leading horse are up, and by-and-by the
plough rises, as they come back on the opposite tack. Thus the long
hours slowly pass.
Intent day after day upon the earth beneath his feet or upon the tree in
the hedge yonder, by which, as by a lighthouse, he strikes out a
straight furrow, his mind absorbs the spirit of the land. When the
plough pauses, as he takes out his bread and cheese in the corner of the
field for luncheon, he looks over the low cropped hedge and sees far off
the glitter of the sunshine on the glass roof of the Crystal Palace. The
light plays and dances on it, flickering as on rippling water. But,
though hard by, he is not of London. The horses go on again, and his
gaze is bent down upon the furrow.
A mile or so up the road there is a place where it widens, and broad
strips of sward run parallel on both sides. Beside the path, but just
off it, so as to be no obstruction, an aged man stands watching his
sheep. He has stood there so long that at last the restless sheep dog
has settled down on the grass. He wears a white smock-frock, and leans
heavily on his long staff, which he holds with both hands, propping his
chest upon it. His face is set in a frame of white--white hair, white
whiskers, short white beard. It is much wrinkled with years; but still
has a hale and hearty hue.
The sheep are only on their way from one part of the farm to another,
perhaps half a mile; but they have already been an hour, and will
probably occupy another in getting there. Some are feeding steadily;
some are in a gateway, doing nothing, like their pastor; if they were
on the loneliest slope of the Downs he and they could not be more
unconcerned. Carriages go past, and neither the sheep nor the shepherd
turn to look.
Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound--a roar, mellowed and
subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave
struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal
fraction of time--such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of
cannon. Another and another. The big guns at Woolwich are at work. The
shepherd takes no heed--neither he nor his sheep.
His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind pays no attention. He
knows of nothing but his sheep. You may brush by him along the footpath
and it is doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak about the sheep,
and instantly he looks you in the face and answers with interest.
Round the corner of the straw-rick by the red-roofed barn there comes
another man, this time with smoke-blackened face, and bringing with him
an odour of cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of a steam ploughing
engine, whose broad wheels in summer leave their impression in the deep
white dust of the roads, and in moist weather sink into the soil at the
gateways and leave their mark as perfect as in wax. But though familiar
with valves, and tubes, and gauges, spending his hours polishing brass
and steel, and sometimes busy with spanner and hammer, his talk, too, is
of the fields.
He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue fine enough to work.
Like many others of the men who are employed on the farms about town he
came originally from a little village a hundred miles away, in the heart
of the country. The stamp of the land is on him, too.
Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally have a settled
destination, many agricultural folk drift along the roads and lanes
searching for work. They are sometimes alone, or in couples, or they are
a man and his wife, and carry hoes. You can tell them as far as you can
see them, for they stop and look over every gateway to note how the crop
is progressing, and whether any labour is required.
On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of customers at the shops in the
towns, under the very shadow of the almost palatial villas of wealthy
"City" men, there may be seen women whose dress and talk at once mark
them out as agricultural. They have come in on foot from distant farms
for a supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No town-bred
woman, however poor, would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons.
Their daughters who go with them have caught the finery of the town, and
they do not mean to stay in the cottage.
There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated ground, not very far
from the same old barn. In the corner of this field for the last two or
three years a great pit of roots has been made: that is, the roots are
piled together and covered with straw and earth. When this mound is
opened in the early spring a stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside
it, billhook in hand, and there she sits the day through trimming the
roots one by one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready to
be carted away to the cattle.
A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against which some of the
straw from a mound has been thrown, keeps off some of the wind. But the
easterly breezes sweeping over the bare upland must rush round and over
that slight bulwark with force but little broken. Holding the root in
the left hand, she turns it round and slashes off the projections with
quick blows, which seem to only just miss her fingers, laughing and
talking the while with two children who have brought her some
refreshment, and who roll and tumble and play about her. The scene might
be bodily removed and set down a hundred miles away, in the midst of a
western county, and would there be perfectly at one with the
surroundings.
Here, as she sits and chops, the east wind brings the boom of trains
continually rolling over an iron bridge to and from the metropolis. She
was there two successive seasons to my knowledge; she, too, had the
stamp of the land upon her.
The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd so often stands watching
his sheep feeding along to this field, is decked in summer with many
flowers. By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long stem,
surrounded with small yellow petals. One day towards autumn I noticed a
man looking along a hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant.
He had a small armful of the straggling stalks, from which the flowers
were then fading. The herb had once a medicinal reputation, and, curious
to know if it was still remembered, I asked him the name of the herb and
what it was for. He replied that it was agrimony. "We makes tea of it,
and it is good for the flesh," or, as he pronounced it, "fleysh."
WHEATFIELDS
The cornfields immediately without London on the southern side are among
the first to be reaped. Regular as if clipped to a certain height, the
level wheat shows the slope of the ground, corresponding to it, so that
the glance travels swiftly and unchecked across the fields. They scarce
seemed divided, for the yellow ears on either side rise as high as the
cropped hedge between.
Red spots, like larger poppies, now appear above and now dive down again
beneath the golden surface. These are the red caps worn by some of the
reapers; some of the girls, too, have a red scarf across the shoulder or
round the waist. By instinctive sympathy the heat of summer requires the
contrast of brilliant hues, of scarlet and gold, of poppy and wheat.
A girl, as she rises from her stooping position, turns a face, brown, as
if stained with walnut juice, towards me, the plain gold ring in her
brown ear gleams, so, too, the rings on her finger, nearly black from
the sun, but her dark eyes scarcely pause a second on a stranger. She is
too busy, her tanned fingers are at work again gathering up the cut
wheat. This is no gentle labour, but "hard hand-play," like that in the
battle of the olden time sung by the Saxon poet.
The ceaseless stroke of the reaping-hook falls on the ranks of the corn:
the corn yields, but only inch by inch. If the burning sun, or thirst,
or weariness forces the reaper to rest, the fight too stays, the ranks
do not retreat, and victory is only won by countless blows. The boom of
a bridge as a train rolls over the iron girders resounds, and the brazen
dome on the locomotive is visible for a moment as it passes across the
valley. But no one heeds it--the train goes on its way to the great
city, the reapers abide by their labour. Men and women, lads and girls,
some mere children, judged by their stature, are plunged as it were in
the wheat.
The few that wear bright colours are seen: the many who do not are
unnoticed. Perhaps the dusky girl here with the red scarf may have some
strain of the gipsy, some far-off reminiscence of the sunlit East which
caused her to wind it about her. The sheaf grows under her fingers, it
is bound about with a girdle of twisted stalks, in which mingle the
green bine of convolvulus and the pink-streaked bells that must fade.
Heat comes down from above; heat comes up from beneath, from the dry,
white earth, from the rows of stubble, as if emitted by the endless
tubes of cut stalks pointing upwards. Wheat is a plant of the sun: it
loves the heat, and heat crackles in the rustle of the straw. The
pimpernels above which the hook passed are wide open: the larger white
convolvulus trumpets droop languidly on the low hedge: the distant hills
are dim with the vapour of heat; the very clouds which stay motionless
in the sky reflect a yet more brilliant light from their white edges. Is
there no shadow?
There is no tree in the field, and the low hedge can shelter nothing;
but bordering the next, on rather higher ground, is an ash copse, with
some few spruce firs. Resting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a
light air now and again draws along beside the nut-tree bushes of the
hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as
it is, it sways the heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to
lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among which it is entangled.
How swiftly the much-desired summer comes upon us! Even with the reapers
at work before one it is difficult to realise that it has not only come,
but will soon be passing away. Sweet summer is but just long enough for
the happy loves of the larks. It seems but yesterday, it is really more
than five months since, that, leaning against the gate there, I watched
a lark and his affianced on the ground among the grey stubble of last
year still standing.
His crest was high and his form upright, he ran a little way and then
sang, went on again and sang again to his love, moving parallel with
him. Then passing from the old dead stubble to fresh-turned furrows,
still they went side by side, now down in the valley between the clods,
now mounting the ridges, but always together, always with song and joy,
till I lost them across the brown earth. But even then from time to time
came the sweet voice, full of hope in coming summer.
The day declined, and from the clear, cold sky of March the moon looked
down, gleaming on the smooth planed furrow which the plough had passed.
Scarce had she faded in the dawn ere the lark sang again, high in the
morning sky. The evenings became dark; still he rose above the shadows
and the dusky earth, and his song fell from the bosom of the night. With
full untiring choir the joyous host heralded the birth of the corn; the
slender forceless seed-leaves which came gently up till they had risen
above the proud crests of the lovers.
Time advanced and the bare mounds about the field, carefully cleaned by
the husbandman, were covered again with wild herbs and plants, like a
fringe to a garment of pure green. Parsley and "gix," and clogweed, and
sauce-alone, whose white flowers smell of garlic if crushed in the
fingers, came up along the hedge; by the gateway from the bare trodden
earth appeared the shepherd's purse; small must be the coin to go in its
seed capsule, and therefore it was so called with grim and truthful
humour, for the shepherd, hard as is his work, facing wind and weather,
carries home but little money.
Yellow charlock shot up faster and shone bright above the corn; the oaks
showered down their green flowers like moss upon the ground; the
tree-pipits sang on the branches and descending to the wheat. The rusty
chain-harrow, lying inside the gate, all tangled together, was concealed
with grasses. Yonder the magpies fluttered over the beans among which
they are always searching in spring; blackbirds, too, are fond of a
beanfield.
Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright yellow mustard
flowered, a hill of yellow behind the elms. The luxuriant purple of
trifolium, acres of rich colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a
scent of flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the peas which
clung together for support--the stalk of the pea goes through the leaf
as a painter thrusts his thumb through his palette. Under the edge of
the footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms.
Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the elms as the clouds
come over, it is pleasant to hear the cool refreshing rain come softly
down; the green wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop
reaches the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever.
Wood-pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds whistle in the trees;
the sweet delicious rain refreshes them as it does the corn.
Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric atmosphere rapidly
draws the wheat up higher. A few days' sunshine and the first wheatear
appears. Very likely there are others near, but standing with their hood
of green leaf towards you, and therefore hidden. As the wheat comes into
ear it is garlanded about with hedges in full flower.
It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is decked in white. On the
high-reaching briars white June roses; white flowers on the lowly
brambles; broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white cornels
blooming under the elm; honeysuckle hanging creamy white coronals round
the ash boughs; white meadow-sweet flowering on the shore of the ditch;
white clover, too, beside the gateway. As spring is azure and purple, so
midsummer is white, and autumn golden. Thus the coming out of the wheat
into ear is marked and welcomed with the purest colour.
But these, though the most prominent along the hedge, are not the only
flowers; the prevalent white is embroidered with other hues. The brown
feathers of a few reeds growing where the furrows empty the showers into
the ditch, wave above the corn. Among the leaves of mallow its mauve
petals are sheltered from the sun. On slender stalks the yellow
vetchling blooms, reaching ambitiously as tall as the lowest of the
brambles. Bird's-foot lotus, with red claws, is overtopped by the
grasses.