THE AFTERMATH OF THISTLES. 93 



monious, and thoroughly cowed creature who always puts on a 

 smooth face and pretends to be a very good boy indeed." 1 



As we have seen before the close of the 'eighties, 

 the life of Under the Greenwood Tiee had entirely disap- 

 peared from rural England. The social life which had 

 been evolved out of communal rights had been completely 

 swept away. In its place the labourer had won the 

 right to combine and the right to vote ; but so denuded 

 had been the countryside of its most ardent spirits that 

 another generation had .to be born before advantage was 

 taken of the one or the other. 



Many a county in rural England, indeed, began to bear 

 signs of neglect as though a blight had settled on the coun- 

 tryside. Docks ripening into armouries of seed stained 

 the ill-cultivated fields, and argosies of thistledown sailed 

 unchecked over water-logged land. Grass, unfortunately, 

 with much couch amongst it, crept steadily over the fields 

 of stubble. In ten years one million acres were lost to 

 the plough. 



The decay of rural population did not affect one class 

 alone the labourer but all classes of rural workers. The 

 village blacksmith had fewer horses to shoe ; agricultural 

 implements were bought at the glittering ironmonger's in 

 the nearest town, to which the railway swiftly carried the 

 farmer. The smithy closed down or dispensed with an 

 apprentice, or the smith worked two village forges. He 

 was no longer asked to make scythes, billhooks, or mattocks. 

 His sole business became that of shoeing horses, sharpening 

 the plough coulter, or fitting a new finger to the mowing 

 machine which was now displacing the scythe. 



The village carpenter's son did not wait to step into 

 his father's shoes, which were already down at heel in this 

 iron age. His bicycle took him to the town, and he turned 

 up in the village on Sunday with a fashionable billycock, 

 a walking stick and a Waterbury, which played havoc 

 amongst the beribboned lasses who in their turn were begin- 

 ning to cultivate what is called a " taste." His presence 

 in the village acted with greater and more magical effect 



1 A ready, by Augustus Jessopp. 



