GRAVESEND. 393 



beginning above at the top of the stack, and so down- 

 wards, when he also sweeps away all the loose straw 

 which lies on the stack, and makes the straw-thatch on 

 the whole smooth. After that he continues [T. II. 

 p. 37] to thatch the upper part of the roof of the stack, 

 in the manner before described. 



The lower sides, B D and C E, never stand perpen- 

 dicular, but are always made so that the higher they get 

 the farther they project outwards, so that the stack is 

 narrowest down at the ground, and broadest up at the 

 thack-band. Both the round and square have this 

 peculiar shape, which prevents the water that drips down 

 from the bottom of the thatch from falling on the lower 

 sides and rotting them. No pole is set in the middle of 

 a stack, as with us. 



In some places they make very large and high stacks. 

 When the stack becomes so high that they can no longer 

 reach to cast the hay from down below up to the carl upon 

 the stack, there is built on one side of the stack a 

 scaffold of boards, or a door which lies on two poles, on 

 which a carl places himself, to whom the hay is first 

 cast, and who afterwards sends it farther up on the stack. 



When the stacks are thatched with bare hay, some- 

 times also when they are thatched with straw, they are 

 often made smooth on the surface with simply a rake, 

 rafsa, so that they, as it were, comb down the top of 

 the stack with it. The shape of the haystacks and the 

 manner of making them was everywhere in this district 

 the same as I have now described. Most haystacks were 

 here thatched with straw. 



Up at the summit of the haystack the spars always 

 lie bare and uncovered, and thus come to be seen there. 

 The stacks were always so arranged that the thatch was 

 very steep, for the rain and wet to be able to run off 

 so much the quicker. The pitchforks, Jarngafflarna, 



