LONDON AND SUBURBS. 83 



harvest 4 are past, they return home with the money 

 which they have been able to earn. 



In the same way as the Irishmen seek their food and 

 income on this side in the summer, so it is the case with 

 those from Whales or Wallis that they earn their money 

 also on this side of England in Kent, for towards the 

 haymaking season, b.6-bargnings-tiden, the folk come 

 from thence in very large numbers down to the country 

 parts of Kent to work for wages ; but with this difference 

 that instead of only men coming as from Ireland, there 

 come mostly only women and girls, bara qvin folk, 

 hustrur, OCh pigor, from Wales, all well, cleanly, and 

 very neatly clad. These perform nearly all the summer 

 cropping in Kent, both of hay and grain. They also 

 take down and pluck off the hops. They remake the 

 hop gardens. They [T. I. p. 470] gather the various 

 kinds of beautiful fruits which Kent produces. But I 

 will return to the farmers in Middlesex, and their 

 meadow cultivation, angs-skotsel. It is there the afore- 

 named Irishmen, whom they employ in summer to mow 

 and carry all their hay. As soon as the meadow has thus 

 been mown in the month of May, and the hay stacked, 

 no cattle are turned into the meadows, but the grass 

 then at once has freedom to begin to shoot and grow, in 

 which it makes such progress that if the weather is good 

 they often get to mow them for the second time by the 

 beginning of July. If it happens, then, that they have 

 finished the aftermath or second mowing early, even 

 then no cattle are slipped into the meadows to bait, but 

 the grass is again left freedom to grow, by which they 

 get to mow the meadows for the third time in September. 

 But if the spring is late, as it was this year [1748] so that 

 they cannot finish the first mowing before the close of 

 May or the beginning of June, and consequently the 



second not before the second half of July, then they do 



g 2 



