The Pattern Under the Plough Page 14
In some regions of Britain farmers introduced a billy-goat into the cowshed to prevent the spread of abortion among the cattle; and it is likely that this practice still survives. A search in East Anglia has not revealed that it was followed here; but there is a recorded instance of a billy-goat being housed recently in a racing-stable at Newmarket. A horse called Golden Fire was so nervous that it proved almost impossible to train him;8 ‘His (the trainer’s) headman suggested that a goat might have a calming influence. Soon afterwards a goat called Munsy was introduced to Golden Fire who quickly reformed.’ The horse reformed to such purpose that he immediately won two handicaps. There is a theory that the first case of contagious abortion always gives rise to an epidemic; that the smell of the dead foetus triggers off a physiological mechanism in the other cattle in the cowshed so that they are immediately affected. The theory sounds far-fetched but it is worth examining later in connection with the sense of smell in the horse. Yet it can be stated here that biologists have turned their attention to animal odours by extensive research only in recent years; and the field is such a large one that it would not be too much to say that work on it has only just begun. If this theory is true, then the prevention of abortion spread could be explained in this way: the malodorous flank gland of the billy-goat would cancel out the inhibiting odour caused by the first abortion and thus prevent its spreading. In the case of the race-horse it could be maintained this is just another instance of a nervous horse taking a liking to an unusual stable companion (a donkey often served the same purpose). On the other hand, granted that a horse is extremely susceptible to odours, it may well be that the goat’s smell masked another odour, undetectable by the human nose, but which was particularly offensive to the horse, and would, as we know from other instances, be a sufficient explanation for his extreme nervousness.
Some ingenious applications of the principle of sympathetic magic were to be found in animal breeding. One Suffolk horse-leader for instance, was always careful that the sun did not shine into his stallion’s eyes while he was serving a mare. If this happened, the foal, he maintained, would be born with four white feet, a most undesirable trait which always made a horse suspect. This is similar to the device observed in Wales (Carmarthenshire)9 where a cow about to be served by a bull was placed in front of a white-washed wall or barn to ensure there would be a preponderance of white in the coat of the resulting offspring. This, again, was a universal practice; and one of its most detailed examples was to be found among the Nez Percé Indians of North America: this was the tribe which bred the Appaloosa strain of horse.10 To ensure that the spots were well placed on the colt, the pregnant mare was marked with a special kind of paint, prepared from a secret formula and applied at the correct time with the aid of certain magic words. This practice of attempting to control the markings of an unborn animal has a long history, and recalls the resourceful Jacob’s peeling of the rods of green poplar, hazel, and chestnut and placing them in the gutter of the water troughs when the flocks and herds came to drink:11 ‘And the flocks conceived before the rods and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled and spotted.’
Not many unorthodox remedies for the cure of sick cattle have been found in this area, and the contrast with the abundance of horse-cures is noticeable. But here is one from Wetherden near Stowmarket: the date is the last part of the eighteenth century. It is of interest because it implies the importance of a sweet-smelling nethus.12 ‘For the use of Cattel: Take rue, sage, wormwood and lavender – a handful of each. Infuse them in a gallon of whit wine vinegar in a stone pot covered close. Set on wormwood ashes (?) for four days, after wich strain the liquid through a fine flannel and put it into bottles well corked. Into every quart bottle put a quarter of an ounce of Samphire, the herb the Liquor is mad from. Set it in a tub in the cowhouse. The cows are fond of the smell, and every morning and night when the cows come to be milked Dip a Sponge in the liquid and rub the Nostrils and Mouth of the Beast well.
‘If a man or woman would keep a box with a Sponge Dipped in the liquor when they go where any infection is, only rub their temples, nose, mouth, and palm of the hands and (they) will not catch any Disorder. It is therefore propere for nurses who attend the sick, physical gentleman and Judges who try prisoners coming from a jail. This is a fine thing for those troubled with the hiddake to smell on.’
Not much material about pigs has been found in this area, but there is a well established belief in Suffolk that pigs can see the wind; or at least they have, by some means or other, fore-knowledge of the coming of high winds. A pig-farmer in west Suffolk said that he had noticed that pigs are extremely sensitive to wind and generally have no liking for it: it is possible that they react bodily to a change of air-pressure before the wind actually begins to blow. Physiological explanation or none, many people still believe in the pig’s traditional gift as the following story shows: ‘They say round here (the Stowmarket district of Suffolk) that pigs can see the wind. If they go wild and go a-rooting at the straw there’ll be a gale, sure enough, before the end of the day. I once knew a man named Buckle who was up sawing off the branch of a tree. The tree was a hedgerow one, next to a field with a lot of pigs. Suddenly, for no reason at all, the pigs tossed up their heads and went running around like mad things. A bit later this man Buckle fell off the tree; got on the wrong side o’ the branch he was sawing, or suthen like that. Anyway, down he come. His mates saw him fall and ran towards him. As they came up to him he was a-picking himself off the ground. And one of them said to him: “Why did you come down, Buckle?”
‘“Well,” he say, “I see the pigs a-tossin’ up their hids and a-caperin’ about, so I know they’d seen the wind. So I thought to myself I’d better git down right quick afore it gits properly a-started.”’
It is difficult to throw any light on this belief by referring it to any principle like sympathetic magic; and it is fairly certain that it is a true superstition – a stand-over from an ancient religious cult. Robert Graves suggests13 that pigs were sacred to the ancient Mother Goddess who also had charge of the four cardinal winds. This is probably the original reason for pig being a taboo word among fishermen when they are afloat. The importance of the pig in ancient Ireland is significant14 and it is evident from the old Welsh tales of the Mabinogi that the pig had a powerful numen in early Britain.
But other animals were believed in this region to give indications of coming bad weather: ‘If a thunderstorm is brewing the cows get uneasy, and often they run round the meadow as fast as they can go, their tails sticking right up.’ ‘Before the rain comes cows in the field will often lie down together with their heads in the same direction – into the wind.’ Horses are always uneasy before rain, shaking themselves frequently; and this has given rise to the saying: ‘It’s a-going to rain. Listen to the horses a-rattling their chains (traces).’ A gamekeeper15 said: ‘When I was at Livermere I used to notice that not long after the cattle had moved over to the shelter of a belt of trees on the other side of the lake, rough weather would soon follow. You can forecast it, too, by watching the birds. One evening the partridges wouldn’t settle down. They kept rising and dropping, rising and dropping. Then suddenly a covey rose and made straight for some high ground not far off. Then covey followed covey to the same spot. The pheasants went running alongside the hedge and made for low ground where they perched on the bottom branches of some pines. I went home that evening and said to my wife: “We’ll have some weather before long.” About three o’clock that morning we had the worst thunderstorm I’ve ever experienced.’
1 The horse displaced the ox comparatively early in East Anglia. v. p. 197, also Robert Blomfield’s Farmer’s Boy: ‘No groaning ox is doom’d to labour there’.
2 v. Thomas Davidson’s, Rowan Tree and Red Thread, London, 1919, and Cattle Milking Charms and Amulets, Gwerin, Vol. II, No. 1, 1958.
3 Caleb Howe, born 1886, Helmingham.
4 G.B., Part 1, Vol. 1, p. 182 ff. and Aftermath, p. 53.
5 J.
E. Jones, Dollas, Berriew.
6 Thomas Davidson, op. cit., p. 49.
7 Aborted – an East Anglian term applied only to cattle. The mare slips her foal; the ewe warps her lamb.
8 The Times, 9th May, 1961.
9 J. V. Price, Agricultural Education Centre, Witnesham, Suffolk.
10 Frank Gilbert Roe, The Indian and the Horse, New York, 1955, p. 154.
11 Genesis, 30.
12 From the papers of Benjamin Batt, Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office.
13 W.G., p. 435.
14 I.F.W., p. 117.
15 William Baker, Woolpit.
17
The Smith and the Old Beliefs
THE richest combination of beliefs and customs relating to the farm in East Anglia is undoubtedly centred in the heavy horse. Up to recent years when horses still worked on the farmlands, the blacksmith was a key figure in the phalanx of craftsmen who were concerned with the horse directly or indirectly – the wheelwright, the harness-maker, the horseman himself, and the country tailor; and we should expect some of this richness to crystallize around him and around his forge. But the smith was a great figure of interest in his own right even before horses were his chief concern. Moreover, the fact that he was deified or highly honoured in so many cultures – Tubal-cain, Hephaestos, Vulcan, Wieland or Volundr – is a measure of the awe with which he was regarded in early times. At first, too, a man who could hammer sparks of fire out of an object was looked upon with fear, as someone who was in league with the Underworld or the Powers of Darkness. For this reason, and from their ingrained fear of iron, primitive people preferred to let travelling smiths, the early ancestors of the tinkers, risk their souls by working in iron and having traffic with the Devil.
In spite, too, of the archaeologists’ dating of the Iron Age as beginning about 500 B.C. in Britain, iron was a very costly and a comparatively rare metal for centuries afterwards. It was only when the rich mines of northern Europe were opened in Carolingian times that iron became material for really common use, ceasing to be a precious metal reserved chiefly for arms and the more costly tools.1 This period – the sixth to the ninth century – is a stamping ground for guess-work, but it seems tolerably certain that this access of iron was at least partly responsible for the winning of the farmlands of Britain, particularly those on the heavier clay soils. For during this period the Anglo-Saxons used their heavy plough with its share, coulter, and hake – all made of iron – to such purpose that by the eleventh century they had given these farmlands a form that in some counties lasted right up to the present century.2
The smith, therefore, even when iron had become plentiful and he had outgrown the superstitious awe that surrounded him, still remained a special figure in an economy that depended so much on iron ploughshares and iron coulters, iron queues or tips for the hooves of oxen and shoes for the horses; and some of his ancient eminence in the order of the countryside has remained to this day in many of the legends surrounding him and his craft. ‘The smith,’ a Suffolk blacksmith said, recounting one of them, ‘is the next best man to the Lord. For the Lord changed water into wine and the smith changed old iron into new; and if you ask a smith how he got the frills at the bottom of his leather apron he’ll probably tell you something like this: The blacksmith was once considered the most important man next to the King. So when the King gave a feast to all his craftsmen he had the smith sitting next to him in the place of honour on his right hand. There was a little bit of jealousy among the other craftsmen because of this; and the tailor who was sitting opposite the smith particularly didn’t like the favour shown to him. He said nothing, though, but while the feast was going on he quietly took out his scissors and slyly snipped the smith’s leather apron under cover of the table, putting his malice into every cut in the leather.
‘Of course,’ the blacksmith explained after he’d finished his story, ‘you haven’t got to believe one word of it! I myself cut the frills in the bottom of this leather apron I’m wearing; and I did it for a very good reason. Often when I’m hammering a piece of hot iron, the scales drop off on to the anvil and mess up the work. To get rid of ’em, I only have to lift up the edge of the apron, bunch it in one hand, and I’ve got a brush that’ll sweep the anvil clean with one flick.’
The smith’s difference from other men is also shown by the privilege he alone has of mounting a horse-shoe with points downwards. Any other person who uses the charm mounts it points uppermost: it would be at his own peril to do otherwise, so it is believed. And the smith’s privilege is confirmed by the mark of his trade; for the badge of the Worshipful Company of Farriers is a pyramid of three joined horse-shoes each with its points downwards. But many smiths, even in modern times, occupied a privileged position in the countryside because they shared the old farm horsemen’s apparently magical secrets. Whether there was a tight organization of horsemen in this region similar to the Society of the Horsemen’s Word in north-east Scotland, or whether there was merely an informal inner ring of the most knowledgeable, the blacksmith – or at least some blacksmiths – was admitted to their secrets. In the initiation oath of the Scottish horsemen the smith or farrier is mentioned as the only person other than a true horseman who is entitled to share their lore. This was probably no more than a recognition of what became in time an accomplished fact; for the forge and the travus, the little annex where the horse is actually shod, were the very stage and spotlight of that horse-control in which most of the skills and secrets of the Horsemen’s Society were concentrated.
But to turn to the role of the smith as skilled craftsman, or artist-craftsman such as the smith we are considering now.3 He had to go through the rigours of a long apprenticeship of seven years, following the medieval pattern. He spent five years with a master smith after which he had to pass a practical test. He then went for two years as an improver to another smith, a stage corresponding to journeyman in other crafts or trades. After this term he returned to his original master, as a master of the trade, qualified to set up as a smith in his own right. The smith has described some of the customs linked with his apprenticeship. There was a kind of initiation ceremony similar to the harvest-field initiation and the ceremony of First Nail.4 A new apprentice was seized by the men in the smithy, and a nail was driven into the heel of his shoe until he shouted, ‘Beer!’ This word was his bond of agreement to pay for a pint of beer for every man working in the smithy: it was a kind of token payment on entry into his apprenticeship. In the Brandeston forge there was a four-and-a-half gallon barrel of beer always kept under a bench; and the men got their allowances, such as First Nail, from here. As the boy grew accustomed to the gruelling work at the forge, and his muscles began to harden up, he was given one of his first tests. He had to bend down, put both forearms under the anvil and lift it off the floor of the smithy. If at first he was unable to do this, he kept trying during the course of his apprenticeship until he had successfully completed the test. This, no doubt, was a device to emphasize to the lad that he needed not only skill and intelligence but main strength to follow the craft of smithing.
Hector Moore told an apocryphal story5 about an apprentice which nevertheless points to a very necessary aspect of the smith’s craft – the need for accuracy. At the beginning of his apprenticeship a boy was told by the master-smith: ‘If you follow this job, your working day will always begin with a big W; but dew you stick to it, my boy. And when you’ve finished your time, I’ll give you a Golden Rule.’ This promise either stirred the young lad’s imagination or excited his cupidity. For a rule in Suffolk, as among craftsmen elsewhere, is a ruler; and a blacksmith’s rule is the graduated strip of brass that he usually keeps in a narrow pocket along the leg of his trousers or overalls. The boy said nothing further, as he had already built up a picture of a kind of ceremonial ruler of gold, something of great value that would be presented to him as soon as he finished his apprenticeship – something he could keep in an honoured place on the mantel-shelf, or wherever the family treas
ures were shown, as an earnest that he had truly served his time. But when, however, he came to the end of his apprenticeship, the smith told him: ‘You have finished your time to my satisfaction. You are now a master-smith and I can give you the Golden Rule. Here it is: Measure twice and cut once’; astringent advice to the young smith but advice that would have a wider application than simply to the niceties of his own craft.
The skill of a good smith needs no paeans here; but the standards he set himself and the care he took to carry them out are epitomized in the story from another village. It concerns a wheelwright, a fellow craftsman whose shop was usually next door to the forge in most East Anglian villages. A wheelwright who specialized in making farm-tumbrils and wagons could tell if one of his own vehicles was passing on the road merely by the sounds it made. It could be dark, and he could be indoors but he had only to hear it to say: ‘That’s one o’ mine.’ The same wheelwright, as soon as he had finished a wagon, made a practice of having the horses harnessed to it immediately. He then had someone to drive it out on to the road, he himself walking behind the wagon for a few miles, listening intently all the while to the sounds it made to make sure it was running true. If he detected an unfamiliar noise, he would have the wagon taken back to his yard; and he would not let it go to its new owner until he was satisfied he had remedied the fault.