PREFACE 



THE history of farming should be written by a 

 farmer. A history of labourers should be written 

 by a labourer. This history suffers from the defect 

 that it is not written by a labourer. It is, however, 

 written by one who has tilled the land for many 

 years and has tried to survey rural England through 

 the eyes of a farm worker. Therefore I have written 

 this history of the agricultural labourer as a par- 

 taker of his life, rather than from the detached point 

 of view of the spectator, or the man of the study. 

 To my mind the only honest historian is he who is 

 not afraid to wear his heart upon his sleeve, as 

 Cobbett did when he wrote his Rural Rides. A 

 Gradgrind historian in exhibiting his selected facts 

 is accurate at the expense of truth. 



I have tried to interest the student in a life 

 which has been considered prosaic to the point of 

 stolidity, by showing him that it is filled with great 

 adventures. He will find many references to Blue 

 Books, sufficient, at any rate, I hope, to satisfy the 

 academic mind ; but my chief authorities bear 

 names which it would be fruitless to mention, for 

 they are the obscure folk who follow the plough, 

 who drive the cattle from the pastures, and who 

 fold the sheep at the foot of the Downs. They are 

 the unrecorded men who give us our daily bread. 

 It is to them that I and my readers owe thanks. 

 One day, let us hope, some Englishman, who has 

 endured with fortitude the life on the land, with all 

 its pain and pleasure, will tell the story as it should 

 be told, in words of imperishable beauty. 



F. E. GREEN. 



