Welsh Journals

LIFE AND WORK IN OLD DAYS It may be of interest to the present generation who, compared with their forebears, know not what hard work is, to learn a bit about old days. Let's take farm life More men and women servants on the farms, living in with the farmer, and how they worked! The ploughing for grain crops was done with ox teams and you chose your ploughman as much for his voice as for his skill-for he had to sing to his team the whole day long. I never could get the ox song, only that it began, "Come up, Dazzle, get along Dash," and when demurring, I asked, What if they are not Dazzle and Dash ? Oh, but they were them's ox names." Seed was hand-sown from a "sennet," a home-made, wooden circular band, say six inches deep, with a sheepskin stretched drum-tight over it to form a container. Lots of barley sown, as one ate barley bread from Monday to Saturday and wheaten bread on Sunday. Barley bread which was made in round balls, was so hard that if you dropped a loaf, it bounced. Cheese and bacon were the staple foods. Cheese was made of skim-milk and ewes' milk ewes' milk is the richest of all, and was much sought after by pastrycooks. One old lady told me my sister and I used to milk a hundred and fifty ewes, once a day." In those days, salt was so dear that the cottagers used to have to sell half their pig to get salt for the other side-at eleven shillings and the sides and hams of bacon were hung, to dry and smoke, in the huge hooded chimneys-called the "charnel." Grain was threshed in small quantities with the flail-two sticks jointed together with a stout leather strap, wet-day work for men-and was winnowed by the women. On a very windy day they took the sacks to the highest field on the farm, spread a sheet on the ground and threw the grain up in the air. The wind blew the husks away. A bitter cold job that We used to twine thumbykins around our legs to try to keep warm. "Thumbykins" are straw ropes. Haymaking took men and women, and the hay was carted on truckle carts-a sledge with a high grid behind the horse and no sides or edges of any sort. The women and children dragged them to the farmyards as there were never enough horses for the job. Even the cottagers had their sheep, one or more, that ran with the farmer's flock. He had the lambs and the fleece was carded, spun and dyed to make the family stockings. You always had dye pots on the hob, log'ood for black, scarlet and yaller, to dye your hanks of wool in. Carding and spinning were women's winter work. You didn't need much light for them. Our light was mutton fat in oyster shells, with a rag for wick, and did you need it stronger the old man on the hearth seat would throw fern on the fire and there was a lovely light. Spinning wheels were called turns," and there was a handy turn, quite small he, and stood on the kitchen table to spin horse-hair for hairy-