Gents Mag 1891 part 2 p.130
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Gentleman's Magazine 1891 part 2 p.130
list, horse is varied. He does a little ploughing for potatoes and turnips' "leads" the hay and procures bracken for bedding; and assists in getting peat. Formerly, little else but this peat was used for fires. On some farms the stock has not been entirely cleared out for a qtr of a century. The digging of peat accounts for the numerous holes which I have referred to as dangerous to sheep. The depth of the cutting varies greatly. In earlier times each farmer had his own appropriated breadth which it was his right to cut. It is said that no bread tastes so well as that baked on the live peat coal itself, and the ashes of the peat make a splendid tillage: which fact neutralises a few of the strictures of the press - whether Tory or not is not my duty to say - regarding some of the methods of the Irish tenants. The Yorkshire, as well as the Irish, tenant has his troubles, and I may venture to refer to them again. But the moors of heather themselves seem ever full of joy: "Continual morning for them and in them; they themselves are Aurora, purple and cloudless, stayed on all the happy hills." II. The sorrows of a moorland farmer are not a few. I must not speak of the arrival of mutton from the River Plate and from New Zealand, but of one or two matters which make this struggle with these imports more difficult and distressing. The simplest way of putting these difficulties is to say that a tenant-farmer is not his own master. He cannot grow the crops which he thinks best, and when his crops are grown he cannot deal with them to the greatest advantage. The question of game introduces itself into this important discussion on crops. A farmer wishes to produce a little wheat straw for bedding and thatching; he can also do with a little wheat, in order that he may get his batch ground for his household and his cattle. I will for a moment imagine him to be more confiding and less suspicious than he really is. I will imagine him to be so driven by blind fate as to put in a little wheat, in a suitable situation, and I will ask the world to watch the result with me. If we were ourselves to walk over the ground, we should simply remark - "How well the wheat looks!" and after a certain time we should say - "It seems to be in a fair way for a good crop if the rains keep off." But the gamekeeper, prowling over the land, looks at the green sprouts with very different feelings. At first he cannot believe his eyes, but afterwards he feels "it must be, it is wheat." As soon as he is quite satisfied about this, he scarcely confers with flesh and blood, but he writes out an advertise- |
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