82 KALM'S ENGLAND. 



cultivating the meadows. The meadow is here all their 

 food and sustenance. It seems to be wonderful that it 

 can suffice for that, especially as the farmers in this dis- 

 trict pay a higher rent yearly than others, but still it is 

 so. As they live near London they buy and carry home 

 from thence all their manure, which is collected in the 

 streets, and afterwards carried outside the town and laid 

 in great heaps. No farmer who sends in a load of hay to 

 be sold, allows his wagon to go back empty from the 

 town, but it is there filled with the above-named manure 

 only, which after it has lain its proper time by the meadow 

 and fermented into one mass, brrmnit ihop, is spread 

 out in the autumn over the grass-sward in the meadows. 

 In January, February, or March, the cattle are taken out 

 of the meadows, and do not get to go on them any longer, 

 after which the grass is left freedom to grow. In this 

 state it continues so that the farmer, at the beginning of 

 May goes for the first time on to it with the scythe, lian, 

 and mows it. A farmer [T. I. p. 469] or Landtman on 

 this side has commonly no more servants than one single 

 man, drang. Many might then think, How will he with 

 so little help be able to cut and carry the hay from his 

 many and scattered large meadows ? The answer to this 

 is that he wins, bargar, all his meadows in the summer 

 with day labourers, dags-verks-folk. In the beginning 

 of May there come from Ireland over to England a very 

 large number of Irishmen, who, like our Dalecarlians, 

 Dalkarlar, in Sweden, go and hire themselves out every- 

 where to the farmers. The whole of this part of England 

 which lies immediately north and east of London, carries 

 on nearly all its hay-making and harvest work with only 

 this people, who come over at the beginning of May, and 

 remain there the whole summer, leaving their own dwel- 

 lings at home in Ireland to the care of their wives and 

 children ; but towards autumn, after the seedtime and 



