246 



Farming of Cumberland. 



slipping over the ends by pins through the shafts. This method 

 of drawing was afterwards improved upon by substituting iron 

 rings for the " withys." Thus accoutred, the cart-horse was not 

 driven, but led by a man with the end of the halter in his hand, 

 and the hand in the outside pocket of his long-lapped coat, 

 and many a disastrous overturning was the natural consequence 

 among the uneven tracks and hillocks of the miry and unformed 

 ways. 



The plough-gear was equally primitive with that of the cart, 

 the traces being of rope drawn through a hole in the wooden 

 hames, and secured there by a knot. The other ends were 

 knotted to thick sticks, called swingle-trees, used rough from 

 the axe ; and the performance of the ploughman with his three 

 or four horses, or horses and oxen mixed, his one or two drivers, 

 and an assistant to hold down the beam in tough or stony leas, 

 was on a par with the outfit. 



It was not till near the end of the last century that leather 

 straps and buckles for cart-harness, and chains for plough-gear, 

 came into use ; nor before the first quarter of the present cen- 

 tury elapsed that every vestige of the old style of harnessing had 

 disappeared. 



The present fashion of leather gearing is simple and light 

 compared with that of some parts of England, but may still 

 admit of some curtailing in the weight of the cart-horse bridles, 

 and perhaps of the cart-saddles too. No time is lost in keeping 

 brass buckles bright, or in polishing the hames or other iron 

 parts, but too little time is spent in keeping the leathers of the 

 harness clean and soft, for their preservation, as well as their 

 appearance. 



Old people, now living in the north of the county, talk of 

 their fathers having ridden to fairs, &c., on the most primitive of 

 all saddles — a turf, cut thin, laid over the horse's hack, and tied 

 on with a straw-syme (rope). 



From the way of stabling the horses of those days (100 years 

 ago) at fairs, viz. in old barns, or any unstalled building, untied 

 and unfoddered, it was no unusual thing to find the straw-girth 

 had been eaten away and the saddle trodden under foot. The 

 writer remembers seeing stirrups of straw used with pads made 

 of something like hempen cloth or very coarse linen. 



( To be concluded in the next Part of the Journal.) 



