286 
Farming of Monmouthshire. 
of the tlistrlct mijrlit very properly be described under the one 
word pastoral. The whole country was pretty well divided into 
small farms ranging from 50 to 150 acres each, and the inha- 
bitants, a careful and thrifty race, possessed one common system 
(if system it may be called) of managing the land. 
They generally reserved a small croft, or portion of land near 
the dwelling, for the milch cows, and ploughed a few acres of 
the best upland for oats. This was a successional crop, without 
dissolution of continuity, with an occasional plant of potatoes by 
way of variety, till the piece, having become thoroughly exhausted, 
was left for Dame Nature to carry on the seeding and laying 
down. In the course of a few years the land would again become 
green ; for, as observed above, in consequence of the humidity of 
the atmosphere, it is wonderful how quickly the barren places 
will again become clothed with verdure, even upon the slopes of 
the highest mountains. Then, after a natural sward was formed, 
the previous course of husbandry again followed. 
The oats, ground down generally into a very fine meal, were 
converted into a thin kind of cake, which, under the name of 
" Bara Ceirch," or oatmeal-bread, formed with baron the prin- 
cipal food of the farmer, who looked ever to his flocks and herds 
as his mainstay, and who, like the Indian of the far west, 
appeared to consider the tillage of the soil as something quite 
beneath his notice. The mountains in those days, before they 
were broken up by the excavations and underground workings 
of the miners, and injured by the sulphurous smoke arising 
from innumerable blast and coke-furnaces, provided a remunera- 
tive walk for the native breeds of sheep, cattle, and ponies. 
These mountain flocks appear, from the records of the past, to 
have enjoyed about as much " management " as the land they 
wandered over. 
The mountains of Monmouthshire are, as it is generally 
supposed, "commons without stint," the meaning of which is 
simply this: that any occupier of land may put any amount of 
stock upon the mountain at any time, and no man may say 
him nay. This being the case, it is not at all surprising that we 
hear the golden maxim of former days was, " never kill a ewe ;" 
breed and breed till your stock becomes so numerous that you 
can overrun your neighbour ; but this rule, however glittering to 
the ambitious man, had anything but golden results for the poorer 
class of farmers. They found that unscrupulous men fairly 
drove them off the mountain altogether; indeed instances are 
given of those who boasted of having sheep all the way from the 
Brecon Beacons to Tredegar Park. In fact, so far as the pas- 
turage of the common was concerned, Rob Roy's rule, " let him 
