134 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 



woven in and bound. It was a tradition of the wheat- 

 field handed down from generation to generation, a 

 thing you could not possibly do unless you had been 

 shown the secret — like the knots the sailors tie, a kind 

 of hand art. The wheatstalk being thick at one end 

 makes the sheaf heavier and more solid there, and so in 

 any manner of fastening it or stacking it, it takes a 

 rounded shape like a nine-pin ; the round ricks are 

 built thick in the middle and lessen gradually toward 

 the top and toward the ground. The warm yellow of 

 the straw is very pleasant to look at on a winter's day 

 under a grey sky ; so, too, the straw looks nice and warm 

 and comfortable, thrown down thickly in the yards for 

 the roan cattle. 



After the village has gone back to its home still the 

 work of the wheat is not over ; there is the thatching 

 with straw of last year, which is bleached and contrasts 

 with the yellow of the fresh-gathered crop. Next the 

 threshing ; and meantime the ploughs are at work, and 

 very soon there is talk of seed-time. 



I used to look with wonder when I was a boy at 

 the endless length of wall and the enormous roof of a 

 great tithe barn. The walls of Spanish convents, with 

 little or no window to break the vast monotony, some- 

 what resemble it : the convent is a building, but does 

 not look like a home ; it is too big, too general. So 

 this barn, with its few windows, seemed too immense to 

 belong to any one man. The tithe barn has so com- 

 pletely dropped out of modern life that it may be wel 

 to briefly mention that its use was to hold the tentl 

 sheaf from every wheat-field in the parish. The parson*? 

 tithe was the real actual tenth sheaf bodily taken fronc 

 every field of corn in the district. A visible tenth, yoi'^ 

 see ; a very solid thing. Imagine the vast heap thc\ 



