FARMING BY COLLECTIVE EFFORT 165 



the richest brocades ; but these riches gave 

 little joy, for nobody made use of them. They 

 who sustained the titled occupant by the sweat 

 of their brow would as little think of laughing 

 within its lofty walls as in a cathedral. 



In the hamlet, a few miles away, men and 

 women and little children were decked in 

 colours as gay as any oriental city, and all 

 wore their bravery with the ease of trained 

 actors. I saw a young worker having his 

 toga (a curtain) pinned over his shirt, and his 

 brow crowned with bay leaves, with the un- 

 concern of a Roman born to the purple. Even 

 the village blacksmith, who swaggered about 

 in a scarlet coat (probably a bed-quilt), and the 

 old respectable Methodist, robed in a blue 

 dressing-gown, who led the May Queen's white 

 palfrey, looked as if they were playing parts 

 in a Midsummer Night's Dream. 



Yet it was the old ladies in this motley 

 pastoral pageant, in which history seemed 

 indivisible from fairy tales, who struck me as 

 having the day of their lives. 



It was with dramatic fitness that Roman 

 gentlemen in gold coloured togas, and Roman 

 matrons in green, with sandalled Vestal Virgins 

 in white, should march along the road which 

 led to a Roman village (Bignor), and that 

 Saxons, and folk of Shakespeare's England, 

 with elves, fairies, and witches should follow 

 until the Maypole was reached. It was, 



