168 Singing Valleys 



duties. They roundly resented such totalitarian ideas, and re- 

 fused to take their grain to the mill where the miller a gov- 

 ernment man, and therefore no more popular than an excise- 

 man in the Kentucky mountains exacted a heavy toll of the 

 meal ground. No doubt their husbands tried hard to explain 

 the political and social advantages of this new economy. The 

 women simply would not, or could not, see things that way. 

 Why, they asked, should they pay the state to do for them 

 what they were able and willing to do for themselves? 



'Think of the legions," their husbands replied. "Think of 

 the magnificent new buildings they are putting up in Rome. 

 All that takes money. Think of the wars. It costs money to 

 make a war." 



"But why have any wars?" the answer came back. 



Ultimately, of course, the state and the men had their way. 

 At least to the extent that the Emperor Constantine issued an 

 edict forbidding the use of querns in localities where there was 

 a water mill. The state had to be supported, and progress had 

 to go on, whether women understood the one or wished the 

 other. Men knew that so long as you left an industry in the 

 hands of women and in the home you couldn't exploit it or 

 tax it or monopolize it. Perhaps they argued that you had to 

 raise it to the level of a business and put men in charge of it, 

 to turn it into a problem. Then it became important. 



So the mills were built on the streams all over England. A 

 number of them, including one run by tidewater, are men- 

 tioned in Domesday Book. Meanwhile, however, women con- 

 tinued to use their mothers' and grandmothers' querns, and 

 to cheat the government. There's a stretch of lonely, rocky 

 moorland in Lancashire still known as "Quern Moor." 



But the dignity had been taken from the task of corn-grind- 

 ing. The Code of Ethelbert, written about the middle of the 

 sixth century, decrees: "If anyone molest a maid servant of 

 the king he shall pay 50 shillings amends. Of if she be the 

 maid who grinds at the mill, he shall pay 25 shillings." 



The Norman barons, bishops and abbots were inheritors of 



