happened since we last looked, in the October shooting season. The stackyards seemed to be perfectly empty now. The farmyards were in course of clearing and cleaning, evidently, from the carting of manure, and other tokens. As the eye wandered over the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of the range, it met with several groups of spring labourers,—men and women setting potatoes in a field; lads mowing grass.
“Mowing grass!” exclaimed Jane. “Cutting the grass in May?”
Even so; but it was not for hay, of course. At that hill-farm there is a good deal of stall-feeding; and the cows are not permitted to spoil the pastures with perpetual grazing. The farmer told me that to make hay was the most wasteful use of his pastures; and next, to graze them. He obtained from twice to three times the amount of produce out of them by cutting the grass for stall-feeding, as by the other ordinary methods; so here were the farm lads mowing in May.
After watching another group, and plainly seeing every stroke of work they did by the vivid sunlight, I called Jane to observe what would be the probable fate of Widow Wilson’s weedy pastures. Jane saw, but could not clearly understand, except that something was burning. There was only a thin, blue smoke, and an occasional spark of fire; but a careful kind of burning it clearly was. The men had a bad pasture in hand,—mossy, or more likely, heathery; for the gorse and broom were resplendent beyond the fences. The work was that of paring and burning. The long, serpentine lines of sods (twisted, in order to stand better) had been pared some time before, and were drying; more were being brought up from the plough, which we traced by its white horse when the dark one could not be followed; and at the top of the enclosure a boy was spreading the ashes from the heaps which had burned out.
“Must the gay meadow that we saw this morning be bleak and bare, like that?” asked Jane.
“I fear so, unless the most pestilent weeds can be got rid of by a desperate effort at once. We must take this matter of weeds more to heart before we can boast of ourselves as a model agricultural nation. Before the month is out we shall be seeing all the village children blowing dandelion heads for a match, just as Harry would do here if we would let him. It is a pretty play; and I don’t like stopping any play; but one must not let the winged seeds of obstinate weeds be sent floating in all directions in mere sport.”
We took our stroll before sunset because the spring woods are most beautiful in the fullest light, as at midsummer the dimmest hour is the sweetest. In May there are strong lights in the very thickets, from the thinness and translucency of the foliage. The forms of the trees and the colouring of their bark, and the mosses and ferns it bears, are as distinct as in winter in the checkered glow; while the young foliage affords a thousand tents of green light for birds, bees, and butterflies. We peeped up into these canopies as we went: we found the brambles blossoming below, and blackthorn already whitening in the banks, reminding us of the coming treat of the hawthorn clumps and hedges. We hunted for orchids in a very successful way. We walked along the chesnut avenue, and calculated that its noble flowering would be in its prime when the boys came home for Whitsuntide. We declared the gold-green of the oaks, intermixed with dark firs, the most splendid foliage of all,—notwithstanding the autumn crimsons, yellows, and scarlets which appear in sheltered nooks of a hill country. We anxiously compared the oak and the ash, under all aspects, as the prospects of the summer are popularly believed to depend on which comes into leaf first. We joyfully agreed that the oaks will certainly be out first.
In the park, we found the keeper announcing his decisions about the deer;—as to which of the bucks should be fattened for the table, as he had not taken enough for his master’s hospitality and friendships. There would be some killing in a few days, he told us, and possibly some of the inferior joints would be consigned to the butcher for sale. Venison was never more costly, the long and hard winter having exhausted the fodder, and left the deer in the poorest plight.
We hoped the other dainties of the season would abound, to console great men’s hearts in London;—the turtle, the salmon, sturgeon, lobsters, and turbot; and the spring geese, and all good things that cooks and corporations can tell of. Meantime, we cared more to see the deer peeping over the knolls, and stealing out from among the ferns, or scampering across a sunny slope, than to taste the finest haunch. We longed more for the first swallow (about which a domestic wager was depending), the first swarm of bees, the first bathing expedition, the evening row on the still mere, with our lines set for pike, and the moonlight float on its surface, listening to the nightingale till midnight; or, if it would not favour us, making out with our own songs, though rather shy about singing, because the sound is carried so far, and so perfectly, over still water.
These pleasures, and rook-shooting, and angling expeditions for the boys, and pony-rides and rowing-matches without end, and attendance upon the rifle-drill on the common, which would become a regular evening amusement during the four months of longest days, seemed to afford a goodly prospect for the Whitsuntide holiday. The bailiff, who has a privilege of advising his neighbours, agrees, except in the particular of bathing.
He tells us—
They who bathe in May
Will soon be laid in clay:
They who bathe in June
Will sing a merry tune.
We agree, however, that all depends on the season; and prudent people may, for that matter, bathe without catching cold in every month in the year, if their skins are more familiar with water than most people’s were when that old rhyme was made. Some other old rhymes are perhaps truer: as—
<poem>
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spune;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.
