MEDIAEVAL HARVESTINGS 11 



the Collegiate body of St. Paul's Cathedral, it was one of the labour 

 services to clean out the ditches. But the science of deep drainage 

 made little progress before the nineteenth century. Beans were 

 often dibbed ; but all other seed was sown broadcast. The actual 

 labour of sowing was probably performed by the lord's bailiff, or 

 the hayward, with his own hand, as, at the beginning of the last 

 century, all seed was sown by the farmer himself. The hoeing and 

 the weeding of the crops were among the labour services of the 

 tenants. In cleaning land the maxim was ancient : 



"Who weeds in May 

 Throws all away," 



and the crops were generally weeded in June or the first few days 

 of July. Walter of Henley 1 (thirteenth century) gives St. John's 

 Day (June 24) as the earliest date for cleaning the land. "If," 

 he says, " you cut thistles fifteen days or eight before St. John's 

 Day, for each one will come two or three." On a Suffolk manor, 

 in the fourteenth century, sixty " sarclers," or weeders, were 

 employed in one day, armed, if the weather was dry, with a hook 

 or forked stick, and, in wet weather, with nippers. 



The meadows of the demesne were mown, and the hay made, 

 carted, and put on the manorial ricks, by the labour services of 

 the tenants. They also reaped, bound, gathered, loaded, carted, 

 and stacked the corn crops in the lord's grange. They also threshed 

 the corn, and winnowed it, unless, as was sometimes the case, the 

 duty of winnowing fell to the dairy woman, or " Daye." If any 

 corn was sent for sale to the markets, it was carried there by the 

 labour services of the tenants, in their carts drawn by their teams. 

 Harvestings in the Middle Ages were picturesque scenes of bustle 

 and of merriment among the thousands to whom they meant the 

 return of plenty. On 250 acres at Hawstead in Suffolk, towards the 

 close of the fourteenth century, were grown wheat, oats, barley, 

 peas, and " bolymong," a mixture of tares and oats. The grain 

 crops were cut and housed in two days. On the first day appeared 

 thirty tenants to perform their " bedrepes," and 244 reapers ; on 

 the second day, the thirty tenants and 239 reapers, pitchers, and 

 stackers. Many of this assembly were the smaller peasantry on 

 the manor ; the rest were the lord's farm servants, together with 



1 Walter of Henley's Husbandry, together with an anonymous Husbandry, 

 Seneschaucie, and Robert Grosseteste's Rules, ed. E. Lamond, 1890. For 

 agricultural literature, see Chronological List in Appendix I. 



