78 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



while the labourers find the manure and seed potatoes, and 

 set and lift them. They pay the farmer by giving so many 

 days' work free at hay and corn harvest, the number of 

 days depending upon the amount of potatoes put in. In 

 parts of Pembrokeshire a custom exists by which the wives 

 of labourers, who are ' bound tenants ' of cottages on farms, 

 work for the tenant of the farm, when required, at turnip- 

 hoeing and harvest. A ' bound tenant ' is a labourer who 

 has a cottage let to him by a farmer, often with a few acres 

 of land attached, on condition that he works for that par- 

 ticular farmer whenever required so to do, though the farmer 

 is usually under no obligation to employ such tenant at all. 

 In addition to cash wages he often gets certain allowances 

 in kind. In some parts of South Wales, men working in 

 the collieries, whose families live in the country districts, 

 return to work at the harvest for the owners of their cottages. 

 No Irish labourers now come to Wales for harvest work, as 

 was formerly the case. In parts of South Wales, notably 

 Glamorganshire, a number of labourers from the western 

 counties of England are hired in the farmhouses. Many 

 hundreds of lads have been introduced during recent years 

 from industrial and reformatory schools into the counties 

 of Cardigan and Carmarthen, but during the last three or 

 four years farmers have not been so willing to take them. 

 A fair proportion of these lads get absorbed into the purely 

 Welsh-speaking rural population, while the rest drift into 

 town and industrial districts after a few years' farm service." 



As to the method of obtaining the bulk of the staff, 

 procured, as already stated, on a system of yearly and 

 half-yearly hiring, it used to be the case that they 

 were obtained at fairs ; but as in England, so in Wales, 

 although the fairs still exist in certain parts of the 

 country, the men required are usually engaged privately 

 before the fairs are held. Women, too, are also obtained 

 before the fairs, although, even for purposes of farm- 

 house work, they are more difficult to get now than 

 formerly. A good many farm labourers still attend 

 the fairs, but chiefly for the usual " pleasure " to be 

 obtained, and they have practically lost their old char- 

 acter of " hiring fairs." It is curious that agreements 

 between masters and employed are seldom, if ever, made 

 in writing. They are merely verbal ones, cemented by 

 the payment of " earnest " or contract money, usually 

 fixed at a shilling or two shillings. 



