THE FLAX-FLOWER. 167 
It is so rare a thing now-a-days to see flax 
grown in any quantity, that my English readers 
will not feel the full force of the above little poem. 
The English cottager has not often ground which 
he can use for this purpose ; and, besides, he can 
purchase calico for the wear of his family at a 
much cheaper cost than he could grow flax. Nor 
is the English woman “ handy” at such matters. 
She would think it a great hardship to till, per- 
haps, the very ground upon which it was grown; 
to pull it with the help of her children only, and, 
to her other household cares and occupations, to 
add those of preparing, spinning, and, it might 
be, to help even to weave it into good home- 
spun cloth. Seventy or eighty years ago, how- 
ever, this was not uncommon in England ; and it 
is still common, and in some districts even general 
in Scotland. Burns alludes to the growth of flax 
in many of his poems; and, in the ‘ Cottar’s Sa- 
turday Night,” the mother reckons the age of the 
cheese from the time of the flax flowering. 
The household interest which is taken in the 
flax-field presented itself strongly to us in many a 
wild glen, and in many a desolate mountain-side 
in the Highlands of Scotland, in the summer of 
