This was another service imposed upon the tenantry. Though hard and
heavy work to wash and shear sheep, in the thirteenth century it was
done by women, who are called "shepsters" in the _Vision_ of Piers
Plowman. The sheep were washed in the mill-pond. Shearers were usually
entitled to the wambelocks, or loose locks of wool under the belly of
the sheep; or at Weston, in Oxfordshire, a penny instead of the locks.
The finest part of the fleece is the wool about the sheep's throat,
called in Scotland the haslock, or hawselocks:
"A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo',
Scarlet and green he sets, the borders blew."
_The Gentle Shepherd._
Up in the North they call a sheep-shearing the clipping-time; and to
come in clipping-time is to come as opportunely as at sheep-shearing,
when there are always mirth and good cheer. In the middle of the
seventeenth century, clippers always expected a joint of roasted mutton.
In the _Winter's Tale_, the clown ponders:
"Let me see, what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three
pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice--what will this
sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress
of the feast, and she lays it on.... I must have saffron to colour
the warden pies; mace; dates, none! That's out of my note.
Nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger--but that I may beg; four
pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun."
The old customs of clipping-time were observed by Sir Moyle Finch, at
Walton, near Wetherby, in the time of Charles I., and are thus described
by Henry Best:
"Hee hath usually fower severall keepinges shorne altogether in
the Hall-garth.... He hath had 49 clippers all at once, and their
wage is, to each man 12_d_. a day, and when they have done, beere
and bread and cheese; the traylers have 6_d_. a day. His tenants
the graingers are tyed to come themselves, and winde the well;
they have a fatte wether and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner
provided for their paines; there will be usually three score or
fower score poore folkes gatheringe up the lockes; to oversee whom
standeth the steward and two or three of his friends or servants,
with each of them a rodde in his hande; there are two to carry
away the well, and weigh the roll so soone as it is wounde up, and
another that setteth it downe ever as it is weighed; there is
6_d_. allowed to a piper for playing to the clippers all the day;
the shepheards have each of them his bell-weather's fleece,"--the
"bellys" allowed to the shepherd by the old Saxon laws.
Sheep-shearing was thus celebrated in ancient times with feasting and
rustic pastimes; at present, excepting a supper at the conclusion of the
sheep-shearing, we have few remains of the older custom. Nevertheless,
it is interesting to revert to these pictures of pastoral life and
rusticity, more especially as we find them embellished by the charms of
poetry, and enlivened by a simplicity of manners which, to whatever
period it may belong, is always entertaining, if not productive of
better fruit. The season of the shearing is thus laid down by Dyer:
"If verdant Elder spreads
Her silver flowers, if humble Daisies yield
To yellow rowfoot and luxuriant grass,
Gay Shearing Time approaches."