JULY. 217 



Go muster thy servants, be captaine thyselfe, 

 Providing them weapons and other like pelfe ; 

 Get bottles and wallets, keepe fielde in the heat, 

 The fear is as much as the danger is great. 



With tossing, and raking, and setting on cox, 

 Grasse latelie in swathes is now haie for an oxe ; 

 That done, goe to cart it, and have it awaie, 

 The battell is fought, ye have gotten the daie. 



Cattle in the fields require attention to give them 

 shade and water. Dairy cares continue. Turnips 

 and potatoes require hoeing : in the midland counties 

 late turnips are sown. In the north of England, 

 especially Durham and Northumberland, where the 

 Bondage System exists,* you now see bands of the 

 Bondagers, or young women engaged under that 

 peculiar system to do farm-work, of about a dozen 

 each, with a man at their head, busily employed in 

 hoeing turnips at this season. Wherever you go, 

 these bands of young female labourers strike your 

 eye in the fields of turnips, which, under the beautiful 

 drill system of the north, are like so many gardens 

 for neatness ; or you see them seated in a group at 

 their simple dinner of girdle-cake and milk, cheerful 

 as the air and the sunshine around them. Field- 

 peas are gathered for market. Hops and all kinds 

 of trees may be pruned, the heat speedily drying 

 their wounds and preventing their bleeding. Those 

 who have finished these operations, take the oppor- 



* See " The Rural Life of England," vol. i. p. 165, The Bondage 

 System of the North of England. 

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