Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Where there is a farmhouse there must be a court in which the cattle can run, and where better than under the eye of the master and mistress.
But there was, and is, another, and more serious, drawback. Wells have been sunk close to the houses, and very generally in intimate relation to the courtyard. The result is that in a great many cases the water in the wells becomes contaminated. It is really amazing how many centuries have rolled by without people discovering the fact that such proximity produces contamination, and such contamination leads to diphtheria, or typhoid fever. ”

“ To complete the trefoil is a girl who stands in no way behind Netherland damsels in beauty and lively movements. Her hair, which in the morning had been carefully done up in braids, becomes disengaged by the action and heat, and her incessant leaps and twirls, and finally falls about her shoulders like that of a fury. ”

“ The ordinary farmer is not a reader—how can he be, when he is out of doors all day, and up in the morning before daybreak? We complain that he does not advance with the times; but he is a cautious man, who makes quite sure of his ground before he steps. ”

“ A merciful Providence must have brooded over our ancestors and protected them; how else is it possible that they were not all swept away, and none left to be the progenitors of our own enlightened selves? ”

“ All this is of the past, and so also is the
an essex farmhouse
throb of the flail. There are not many labourers now who understand how to wield the flail. The steam thrasher travels from farm to farm and thrashes and winnows, relieving man of the labour. The flail is only employed for the making of "reed," i.e., straw for thatching the rick. What a robust, rubicund, hearty fellow is our old English farmer. The breed is not extinct, thank God! ”

“ In ordered times only ewes at lambing time, and cows about to calve, and young bullocks were kept in the courtyard; and the calves that the dairymaid had to feed, by dipping her hand in milk and then giving it to the long-legged, silly creatures to suck. The cows were milked in the fields, and milked by the dairymaids. Then that fashion was abandoned, and cows were driven to the stables to be there milked, and these cowhouses were so deep in manure as to dirty the skirts and white stockings of the maids, so they withdrew from the task, and now only men milk the cows. ”

“ She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet, to say truth, she is never alone: she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones. ”

“ But the bauer, on arable land in the plains, is an anxious, worn man, who falls into the hands of the Jews, almost inevitably. Our farmers, well fed, open-hearted, hospitable, yet close-fisted over money, would do well to learn a little thrift from the continental peasant. ”

“ Now, if a man like a cultured schoolmaster at the close of the nineteenth century will act like this, is it a marvel that our forefathers, who were without the means of knowing better, should have made such mistakes? ”

“ The milkmaid is a creature of the past. Now in farmhouses there is great difficulty in getting any girl to work. They want to go to the towns, or consider themselves too highly educated to do menial work. ”

“ This has the parish church attached to it, as it not infrequently was to the manor-house in England.
The dwelling-house forms one side of the courtyard. The other sides are occupied by farm-buildings, stables, cart-sheds, granaries, etc.
To reach the front door of the house one must wade through straw trampled by cattle and oozing with manure. Our forefathers did not mind that. Our farmers of the right sort love it. A farmer whose heart does not glow at stable and cowstall manure has missed his vocation. ”

“ No one usually attends these lectures except a few ladies, but on one occasion a farmer was induced by the rector or the squire, as a personal favour, to listen to one on the chemistry of common life. ”

“ In a curious German account of London and London life, written by Otto Von Rosenberg, and published at Leipzig in 1834, is a picture of a milkmaids' May dance; but in London it had become a chimney-sweeps' performance in place of one of milkmaids. In the country it maintained its character as a festival of dairy-maids. Rosenberg thus describes it:
"A hobbledehoy youth leads the procession with a three-cornered cocked hat on his head, pasted over with gilt paper. Eyebrows and cheeks are strongly marked with paint. ”