14 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



monthly, or quarterly, as may be settled between the 

 parties. In the same counties, ordinary married men 

 are generally engaged by the week. Animal care- 

 takers, however, though sometimes engaged by the 

 week, are frequently hired for longer periods, extending 

 to a year. As intimated already, the " lodgers " in a 

 farmhouse are most generally unmarried men. The 

 methods of feeding them vary too. The men some- 

 times pay for their food but when they happen to be 

 lodging with a " foreman/' the latter's wife cooks it for 

 them, and in such cases the men are allowed eight to 

 ten shillings a week extra for this purpose. This seems 

 to be an arrangement confined to North Cambridgeshire ; 

 but a rather general practice in the counties just named 

 is for the " foreman " himself to be paid from eight to 

 ten shillings a week for each man to provide for his 

 food ; but the payment is not always in cash, but is 

 sometimes partly " in kind " the food and drink, etc., 

 thus supplied being in the form of beer, eggs, fuel, meal, 

 milk, potatoes, vegetables, and wheat. In the same 

 districts, married as well as unmarried men in charge 

 of animals are often engaged by the year or half-year, 

 and ordinary labourers on weekly wages. As to times 

 of payment of wages, these are generally weekly, 

 especially in the case of married men ; but, in Durham 

 and Northumberland, it is frequently the practice to 

 pay fortnightly and sometimes monthly. In the case of 

 those employed by the half-year or the year, advances 

 are frequently made of part of the pay, but the bulk 

 of it is paid at the end of the period of service. 



The subject of the " hiring fairs " for farm labourers 

 of both sexes is alluded to, and commented upon later 

 on in this volume ; but the result of recent inquiry 

 has shown that they are " dying out " in the south- 

 western counties rapidly. They linger, however, in 

 the north that is to say, in the counties of Cumber- 

 land, Durham, Lancashire (North), Northumberland, 



