J04 History of the English Landed Interest. 



of four slieep. Land, it must be remembered, ^yas plentiful, 

 and the lives of cattle and slieep precarious. The milch cows 

 alone were sheltered during the winter, which, if at all severe, 

 decimated the unprotected and half-starved oxen and calves. 

 The cattle were constantly attended by the neatherd, for fear 

 of robbery and violence; the swine, too, had their attendant, to 

 protect them from wolves and keep them within bounds.^ 

 The shepherd pitched his fold on the grass lands, and occa- 

 sionally moved it when the grass witliin was eaten down. 

 The ewes were milked twice daily, and cows tlmce, this latter 

 custom giving the name of trimilchi to the month of May, 

 Avhen the third milkino- commenced each vear. 



The national agriculture, speaking generall^^, consisted in 

 the cultivation of barley and wheat for bread, and the rearing 

 of cattle, sheep, and swine for meat and milk. The orchards 

 (at any rate on monastic lands) aiforded figs, grapes, nuts, 

 almonds, and pears. Each village community brewed its own 

 ale and mead, provided its own luxuries, such as fowls, deer, 

 goats, hares, fish, and honey ; bred and killed its own beef, 

 mutton, and pork ; grew and baked in querns its own flour 

 and barley meal, and manufactured its own linen from flax 

 grown in its own territory.^ 



But few fields or lands were separated by hedges and 

 ditches, save perhaps to partition off the pasturage from the 

 tillage in the common lands, or to enclose small bits of grass 

 close up to or within the villages. As late as the beginning 

 of this century there were districts whose hedges still showed 

 traces of the pastoral or forest state, being apparently of great 

 age, following crooked and in'egular lines, and composed of 

 underwood similar in variety to that in the adjoining wood- 

 lauds, from which they had evidently been collected and 

 afterwards planted along the banks.^ " Hedge " is no doubt 

 a Saxon word, and equivalent to '* hay," another Saxon term. 

 The derivation of both is from the common stem " hseg," an 



^ Craig aiul McFarlaue, Ilht. of Knrj.. Bk. II., ch. iv. 

 ^ For proof of the utter insulation of eacli village, viOe, instance of 

 Bampton Village, given in Gomme, Village Community, p. 159. 

 ' Rees, Encyclo., sub voc, '' Fences." 



