Farming of Ciimherland. 



225 



" Book-farming " is still held up to ridicule by the few who 

 cannot read or understand books, but is eagerly investigated by 

 the many young farmers who are anxious to know more, and 

 farm better, than their fathers have done. 150 years ago as 

 few farmers* could read a book, as there are now to be found 

 who cannot. It is claimed for the farmers and yeomen of the 

 extensive barony of Gilsland and its surrounding neighbourhood 

 that they have profited as farmers by their superior education. 

 The like may fairly be applied to Holme Cultram, and, in fact, to 

 the educated farmer, wherever he is found. For the farming of 

 the present day is as much in advance of that of former times as 

 is the education, and it appears on the eve of being rapidly ad- 

 vanced further. The great drawback on the farmer's education, 

 as a class, is the little intercourse the sons enjoy with the rest 

 of the world from the time of leaving school to the period of 

 active responsibility at the head of a farm. It too often happens 

 that the son is kept at work, instead of taking his turn occasion- 

 ally from home on the business as well as on the work of the 

 farm. However easily and expensively the learning may have 

 been acquired, it is very readily lost at that age, and the man 

 often pays dearly for the thoughtlessness of youth respecting the 

 application of his school education to that of the farm. 



Leases, though now more prevalent than formerly, are by no 

 means general, but are frequently substituted by agreements, 

 and those again by the conditions of letting, signed by the con- 

 tracting parties. Verbal contracts are by no means rare, where 

 mutual confidence exists ; and if disagreements happen, the 

 custom of the county is appealed to by arbitration. During the 

 36 years' stewardship of Mr. John Benn on the Earl of Lons- 

 dale's Whitehaven estates, ending in 1850, very few written 

 contracts for farms existed among the numerous tenantry, and 

 rarely any misunderstanding took place. Among the tenantry 

 of the Earl of Carlisle, too, not a lease exists. 



In the case of strangers coming on to the estate, agreements 

 are usually signed, but very seldom acted upon. Of this large 

 body, all who are disposed to act uprightly find themselves 

 perfectly secure under what they consider as terms from year to 

 year only ; and one of the old tenants lately told the writer that 

 the tenantry considered they held their farms ^rom father to son. 

 There are numerous examples of this honourable confidence ; 



bag being full or otherwise being the only indication of money gaining or money 

 losing with many. 



* There is an inscription cut in stone, in the wall of a house at Hutton Moor 

 End, which tells plainly of the state of education at the date inscribed, viz. :— 

 This bvildings age 

 These letters show 



MDCCXIX 

 Thovgh many gaze 

 Yet few will know." 

 VOL. XIII. Q 



