The English Peasant/Northumbriam Hinds and Ceviot Shepherds

by Richard Heath

XII.

Northumbrian Hinds and Cheviot Shepherds.

(Golden Hours, 1871.)

Notwithstanding the miserable condition of a large number of our fellow-countrymen who follow "the painful plough," there yet remains, even in England, a peasantry concerning whom a Royal Commission has given the following report:—"They are very intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manner. This courtesy, moreover, is not cringing, but coupled with a manly independence of demeanour. Crime is almost unknown in agricultural Northumberland."

During the present summer I sought to find out, as far as I could, what it was made the Northumberland peasantry so superior. I visited Wooler and its neighbourhood, walking along the base of the Cheviots as far as Rothbury, and during my rambles I took every opportunity of conversing with the people, and learning from their own mouths the true state of things.

First of all, the conditions of agricultural service in Northumberland are peculiar. The hind, an old Saxon name implying a household servant, is hired by the year, his term of service commencing on the 13th of May to the same date on the following year. Something like statute fairs are held about Lady-day in Wooler, Rothbury, Belford, Alnwick, and Morpeth, at which the hinds are hired. Unmarried hinds and domestic servants are, however, engaged only a few days before they go to a place.

Cottages are provided expressly for labourers on a farm, and their use considered as part of the wages. They are the property of the laird, as the landlord is called j are built by him, and included in the farmer's rent. Wages are paid mostly in kind, and perhaps the best idea I can give of what this means is to quote a statement given by the post-master at Wooler to the Commissioner, as to the value of wages paid in this fashion:—

Cow (its keep)£	8	0	0
House	3	0	0
Coals (carrying from the pit)	1	5	0
Potatoes	4	0	0
Oats	6	0	0
Barley	4	16	0
Peas	3	0	0
Wheat	2	0	0
Stint Money	5	0	0
£	37	1	0

A hind can, if he prefers it, get paid in cash, but taking all things into consideration he can by this system make from fifteen to eighteen shillings a week.

But there is one great drawback. The hind has to provide a woman to work for his master as required. The hind has to give the "bondager"—for such is the ugly title, evidently a relic of serfdom—yearly wages amounting to £12, 10s., besides food, and lodging, and washing. As he only receives £ for her work, it is clear that he only gets 50s. for her lodging and maintenance all the year round. It frequently happens, however, that the bondager is his own daughter, and this leads to his making a bargain for the labour of his whole family.

To get to Wooler one must go off the line—railways have not penetrated so far—and so I rode across the country on the top of the coach, with the Cheviots full in view. There were only two travellers besides myself, one of whom, though fashionably dressed, quietly informed me that he was a Newcastle policeman going home for a holiday, and that his friends were shepherds.

Wooler is a little town, with one long street branching out into two or three ways at one end. It has a number of inns, but all but two were very small, and none appeared to do any business. It was market-day when I arrived, but the sole additional excitement consisted in the entry about noon of a dozen or twenty squires and farmers, who walked or stood about in groups conversing with each other.

There were a few quiet shops in the street, one a bookseller's. Everything in the way of stationery sold there was of the cheapest description, showing that the owner catered for a class who were not disposed to spend their money on mere luxuries; but on the counter I saw works, which certainly argued an enlightened public in Wooler and its neighbourhood. Erckmann-Chatrian's novels, the Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law,"—such were the books sold on one counter, while the other was devoted to the sale of lollipops and sugar-candy. But I doubt, however, whether the youngsters of Wooler saw any incongruity in these things; for they take equally well to the sweets of learning and of good-stuff. That same afternoon a number of boys running out of school overtook me in the fields. Three of them almost immediately stretched themselves on the grass and recommenced summing. The English Presbyterian schoolmaster at Wooler told the Government Commissioner, Mr Henley, that he had four boys in his school learning Latin,—one the son of a gamekeeper,. another the son of a shepherd, a third the son of a skinner of sheep, and the fourth the son of the widow of a railway porter. Two others learnt French and Euclid, one a shepherd's son, and the other a hind's.

At the beginning of the last century, the country round about' here was almost in a state of nature, now there are few parts of England so well cultivated. Turnip-growing is the work to which the Northumbrian farmers devote their best energies. Thousands of acres are planted here along the base of the Cheviots, upon which, when its verdant herbage begins to fail, the sheep are fed. It is curious to note, as one may frequently at this time of the year, a party of women and boys turnip-hoeing, and all working in a line, with one man as overseer directing them. To a stranger unaccustomed to such a sight it unpleasantly recalls old scenes in the sugar plantations of Jamaica or of South Carolina. But with such a people as the Northumbrians anything like slave-driving is quite impossible. The arrangement is the result of systematic farming, the application of the rules of the factory to the field.

Just outside Wooler is Humbleton Hill, an outpost of the Cheviots, and famous for a fierce border battle, described by Shakespeare.

The hill itself is wild and picturesque, with great boulders of granite scattered all amongst the fern. In some parts the naked rock rises quite precipitous, while the dells between are filled with the foxglove, amongst which the rabbits start, and play hide-and-seek. When at last I reached the top, the wind blew so fiercely that I was glad to shelter myself behind a great cairn which had been raised there. Before me was a deep gorge, and then arose the Cheviot range—great purply round-shouldered hills, with sudden ascents and declivities. Hedgehope lay in light, all its sinuosities brought out soft but distinct, while Old Cheviot rose immediately opposite, wrapped in gloom. Behind its dark brow, like a sea of hills bathed in sunshine, was the Scotch border, while turning to the north-east I saw the German Ocean.

In my descent I came upon an old man carrying home a bundle of wood. He appeared surprised when I told him that I understood labourers were better off in Northumberland than elsewhere. He said that they reckoned, when they had taken everything into consideration, that they did not get more than 12s. a week. He had never been married, but had lived in his old and miserable cot for twenty years, "Why had he never cared to marry?"

"Because," he replied, "a woman in Northumberland 's not worth house room. Why, you see, sir, she's out in the field all day, and knows nothing about housework. A man can do varra superior to the vast of them."

He had made up his mind early in life, not only on this account, but because he would not bring a woman and perhaps a family into the bargain into misery. " Men and women lived disagreeable, for there was nothing like poverty to make them quarrel." Here was the other side of the question, though some will, no doubt, think he was a cynical old bachelor. But his face had nothing sour in it, and I could not but admire the manner in which he accepted his hard fate. He assured me he was quite contented; and although it seemed hard to believe, there was no reason to doubt that he meant what he said.

Next morning I started for a ramble over the Cheviots, but soon lost my way. However, I came upon a couple of cottages, and was allowed to enter one to have a look at its interior. The tenant was a widow woman, who lived there with her three sons and two daughters. One son was a labourer, the other worked in a quarry, while the third went to school. Both daughters worked in the fields, one serving as the bondager. The mother complained that working in the fields affected the health of one of the daughters.

The house consisted of one room and a loft ascended by a ladder. Downstairs were two box beds, which I sketched, as they afforded a good example of this essentially Northumbrian practice. In this particular instance they were without sliding doors or even curtains, as is elsewhere frequently the case. They had begun to entertain some ideas of the benefit of ventilation.

Things looked very comfortable, as doubtless they were not badly off, with four grown-up young people earning their living. They kept a cow in winter-time; it had formerly come into the house, but I understood the practice was discontinued. While sketching, in came a strong, good-looking youth, about eighteen or twenty. The labourers have a good long rest in the middle of the day, an hour and a-half, or two hours. They live well, "eat a vast of meat," although it is principally bacon. Their bread is made of barley and pea-meal mixed. This, with a good basin of porridge and milk, forms their breakfast. To judge from the number of dealers in tea and tobacco, no village, however small, is without one. I infer they drink a great deal of tea and coffee, and this is corroborated by the reports, in which medical men continually express their regret at the growth of this practice, since they believe it to have an injurious tendency.

From thence I wandered over the hills, trying to get into the right track, until at last I came on a shepherd's cottage, where I again inquired the way. Here, too, I was heartily welcomed. The shepherd was at home, and while I attempted a sketch of the interior of his house, he told me freely the conditions of his service.

But first of all, let me describe his home. Its exterior looked dreary enough, seen in the rain. I passed through a little stone passage, and then into a larger apartment. Here were two box beds as in the former house. There was no ceiling, but canvas had been drawn tight over the rafters, so that the great beams came under it. The sides of the house were of rough stones, of the same make as the dykes. Paper had been put over them to give it an appearance of comfort, but the wind got between it and the wall, and made it wabble to and fro. A spotless deal table stood beneath the window, upon which the good-wife was kneading her bread. When it was made it went into a large oven, which formed part of the usual range found in most Northumbrian cots, and which is put in by the tenant himself By the side of the window was a looking-glass and a little case of shelves containing the crockery, all tastefully arranged. As I talked with the shepherd, he kept rocking the cradle, a curious little box on rollers.

His conditions were as follows:—When he entered into service he was allowed to purchase a number of sheep at his master's I expense. When he was married, he began with thirteen; now he I has forty-two. He also has a cow, and kills perhaps two large hogs in the year. Cow and hogs, as well as sheep, are well provided for by the master. Besides this, he supplies him with thirteen barrels of corn, each barrel containing six bushels, and fifteen hundred yards of potatoes, and a house to live in. Coals he buys himself, but they are carted by his master to his door. He makes his income out of the wool of his sheep, and the sale of his lambs. He was going to Alnwick Fair with the latter on the following Monday. His eldest boy was twelve years old; he worked in the fields with the women, turnip-hoeing in the summer, and went to school in the winter. He had a taste for drawing, and had ornamented various parts of the room with his little efforts. His parents said they hoped, if they were spared, to give him another season or two of schooling, although they had four other boys and a little girl.

The shepherd, whose house I sketched, always went down to Wooler on Sunday, to the Presbyterian Church, as his father had done before him for fifty years.

He took me to see another shepherd, who lived in a new house built by the Earl of Tankerville. It was as comfortable as any. one in the world could wish; two large rooms, with every convenience; a capital stove, good oven and boiler, all put in at the laird's expense; a roomy dairy, a cowhouse with stalls for six cows, a stable for the horse, and a place for the dog. Nothing was forgotten. I can imagine no life, on the whole, so healthful and so hopeful as that of a Cheviot shepherd, if the old conditions of service can be maintained, and such cottages built for him.

It is, however, one full of anxiety, and sometimes of great peril. During the winter months they are liable to terrible snowstorms, in which not only the flock but the shepherd himself has been known to perish. The mariner is hardly more weatherwise than the shepherd, but the most experienced shepherd is unable to foresee the extent and fury of these pitiless storms. Sometimes they come with hardly any notice at all, or after warm weather sufficient to delude all but the most canny into the belief that the winter is over and gone; at other times the skies will gather and lower for hours, but none can tell in what quarter the storm will break. In sheltered parts of the hills the shepherds erect stone walls in the form of a circle, roughly built of boulders, and about four feet high, as places of refuge for the sheep when a storm comes on. Happy is the shepherd who can gather his sheep, and fold them safely into such a "stell," for if they get scattered after the storm has set in, they will, of their own accord, seek the nooks and gullies—the very spots where the snow-wreaths accumulate, and get buried at the depth of many feet. When this occurs, the shepherds go and search for the lost sheep with long poles, with which they probe the snow, but in the white, wavy, trackless drift they would have little chance of success, if it were not for the help of their invaluable dogs. The intelligence of these sagacious animals is an ever-renewed cause of wonder; without them, it is not too much to say, a district like the Cheviots would be a desert.

Each shepherd has two dogs, and with such companions he can never be lonely, for, in the business of attending to the flock, they have more than a human sympathy with his wishes and intentions. A word, a look, a whistle is sufficient. They dart off and gather the sheep from distant hills, exercising something very much like reason in bringing home the wanderer for miles, and hardly expecting any reward but the satisfaction of having pleased their master.

The shepherds' houses are built, as a rule, in the glens by the side of a burn. In the blinding mists which suddenly occur a shepherd will sometimes lose his way, and getting on the wrong side of the hill, wander far from his home into some distant valley. Directly he is conscious of having lost himself, he descends the side of the hill until he comes to a watercourse; this soon leads him to a brook, the brook joins a burn, and on the burn he knows erelong he will come to friendly cot, where he can rest and learn his whereabouts.

In the interesting blue-books quoted at the commencement of this article, we have some surprising proofs given of the determination of these shepherds to obtain instruction for themselves and their children.

Anthony Dagg, a shepherd of Linbriggs, on the Cheviots, the father of eleven children, about twenty years ago hired a schoolmaster at his own expense. After a year or two he took his master and two other shepherds into partnership. The school is now attended by thirty-one children, and there is not at the present time a person in the district who cannot read and write. The schoolmaster moves from house to house among his four employers, receiving board and lodging during fourteen days for each scholar.

Near Bellingham a few shepherds on the hills keep a schoolmaster between them, and lately commissioned their schoolmaster to procure for them Virgil, Horace, and Cæsar.

In the winter-time the parents will send the bigger boys into lodgings at Wooler, that they may have further advantages in the way of education. In the school belonging to the English Presbyterians the master speaks of having two sons of shepherds, one learning Latin, the other French and Euclid.

Perhaps the secret of this mental energy lies in the deep religiousness which characterises them as a class.

"It is almost impossible that the shepherd can be other than a religious character, being so much conversant with the Almighty in His works, in all the goings on of Nature, and in His control of the otherwise resistless elements. He feels himself a dependent being, morning and evening, on the great Ruler of the Universe; he holds converse with Him in the cloud and the storm, on the misty mountain and the darksome waste, in the whirling drifts and the overwhelming thaw, and even in the voices and sounds that are only heard by the howling cliff or the solitary dell. How can such a man fail to be impressed with the presence of an Eternal God, of an omniscient eye, and an almighty arm?"

So says the Ettrick Shepherd, and on this subject no one was better able to speak than he. It is true that he is referring to his own people, but all he has to say applies with equal force to the shepherds on the English side of the Border.

Leaving Wooler, I bent my course southwards along the base of the Cheviots, preferring bye-roads, because they brought me through more villages. The system of building cottages on the farms makes villages scarce, and one would be inclined to think there were no people in the land, so rarely does one meet even a solitary wayfarer on the road. Had I had more time, I might have studied many things beside the peasantry.

At Ilderton I came on a long row of cottages, mere plain, substantial little dwellings, each with a window and a door, cold and dreary-looking enough in the pelting rain. I found one where they kept a shop, and sold small groceries, and, entering, ventured to ask them to make me some tea. The house consisted of the one room, which served as bedroom, sitting-room, kitchen, and shop in all. Yet it was a really comfortable little place, as clean as one could wish, and the box-beds hardly looked stuffy. Pictures, not at all bad, adorned the wall; one was a large portrait of John Bunyan. On the table was a volume of Spurgeon's sermons, and a book by McCheyne. There, too, was the tall clock, without which a cottage would never seem furnished in the north.

The good woman, with just a slight tinge of coldness at first, took off a great pot of nettles she was about to boil for the pigs, and hung up the kettle. It seemed to boil in no time, and soon she made some excellent tea. Then she sat down, and began to knit away as if for her life, while her eldest daughter was busily engaged in numberless domestic duties, doing it all so pleasantly as if it were no effort. The youngest daughter it seemed had not reached the age for labour, and it being too wet to go to school was busy with a piece of fancy-work.

The mother said they were not obliged to provide a bondager, like most other people. There was a church at Ilderton, but only two or three families went; the rest were Presbyterians; she should like to hear Mr Spurgeon preach; she had read his "John Ploughman's Talk," and thought he seemed to know all about agricultural life.

On I went until I reached Wooperton, where I was invited to rest by the postmaster. His home was the pink of neatness, but then he was an old bachelor. However, he gave a very different account of Northumbrian women to my old cottager. He had known women who had worked in the fields who were very clever with the needle, and good managers; still, he believed it a bad system for domestic life. There was, however, a true simplicity of character about these labouring girls. He spoke of some who would not look at a man in a superior position; were he worth hundreds, they would refuse him. He believed they were very happy. It was his opinion that in godliness and joy combined—

"The cottage leaves the palace far behind."

The people, he said, came on Sabbath for miles to their chapels in Wooler, Branton, and Glanton; but on sacramental days, which only occur three times a year—in March, July, and October—every one makes an effort to be present, and then the chapels are thronged.

Next day being Sunday, I had an opportunity of going to the chapel at Glanton. A more intelligent, earnest, serious congregation I never saw in my life. There was scarcely a listless or stupid-looking face among them all, the greater part being men between eighteen and fifty. The service was in no way attractive; the hymns were the Scotch paraphrase of the psalms, and the singing at times dragged heavily. But these people have a religion in which they believe, and which they themselves support. They do not go to church to receive a loaf, or a dole of flannel or money; on the contrary, they are expected to believe it is more blessed to give than to receive, and every Sunday round from pew to pew goes the collecting-box, and few, I venture to say, let it pass without a weekly offering. Nearly all the labouring people, shepherds and hinds, are Presbyterians, and not only attend a place of worship, but are generally communicants. In Wooler there are three churches of this denomination, with 600 communicants, another with 300, and at the third, which is called English Presbyterian, there are about 200. Most of their children are sent in due course to be catechized by their ministers. Mr Grey, in his article on Northumbrian Farming in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, particularly notes the clean and respectable attire of the field-working women and girls in attending their places of worship on Sundays, and says it would fill with astonishment, and perhaps envy, the female peasantry of Kent or Surrey.

Before I left Wooler I paid a visit to one of the Presbyterian ministers. He endorsed all I had seen of the domestic life of these noble people. The bondage system, he said, was not so strict as it used to be. He spoke of the blot on the fair fame of Northumbria. Illegitimacy, was not uncommon, but he did not think it much due to field labour the cottages, no doubt, were a source of evil.

The prevalence of this particular vice is attributed by others to the laxity of opinion with reference to the marriage bond, arising from the frequency of border marriages in former times; but it does not seem necessary to go far for a cause in the presence of the bondage system, carried on in connection with one-roomed cottages.

At Eslington, close to Lord Ravensworth's mansion, I went into a cottage where seven persons—a father, mother, grandmother, two grown-up sons, and two other children—all slept in one room, and that room was not weather-tight, since daylight could be seen through the boards which formed the ceiling. They had given up the box-beds because of the "varmint," and had two four-posters, and a fold-up bedstead for the sons.

In this case the mother acted as the bondager, and the grandmother did the housework. Surely such a domestic arrangement is bad enough in itself; how much worse, if in addition they had been obliged to receive a stranger into the family, and that a young female. To a stranger it must be a matter of astonishment how such enlightened people as Northumbrian employers can allow such a system to continue a single day, did we not remember that there is not an evil which has afflicted and oppressed mankind but it has found its ablest apologists amongst truly benevolent men, whose interests, unfortunately for their own clearness of vision, were wrapped up in the maintenance of the institution. It would be a great mistake to suppose that when we speak of seven people sleeping in one room in Northumberland, it comes to the same thing as it would be in other parts of England. We must remember that the house consists of only one room, and is therefore large and comparatively high. This fact, and the good living and air the whole family enjoy, renders it innocuous to health. Both sexes are physically strong.

It is well known that in all athletic sports the north countrymen excel. Perhaps there are no such leapers in the world as the borderers. At Glanton I witnessed the Great Northern Games, and nothing surprised me so much as the height over which the natives leaped. In the flat-racing, hurdle-racing, and wrestling the professional athletes from Scotland and elsewhere came off conquerors, but the leaping was hotly contested by the natives, some vaulting with the aid of a pole over a stick between ten and eleven feet high. With the more serious sports were mingled others of a lighter nature—the Highland fling, donkey-racing, and a curious game at which the boys played blindfolded, and each armed with a bag of coloured dust. The fun consisted in a man, who kept ringing a little bell, leading them all a wild-goose chase, while they, on their part, tried to beat him with their dust-bags, but more frequently falling foul of each other. Of course this excited much merriment, otherwise the proceedings were conducted with the utmost decorum. There was very little laughing, occasional outbursts of enthusiasm in the way of applause, especially of little knots interested in the success of a friend. Otherwise there was no undue prepossession, and the strangers got their full due. All classes were represented, but the greater part were so dressed that had it not been for a covered stand devoted to the gentry, it would have been difficult to say who was who in such a respectable assembly.

I cannot conclude this paper without relating one more incident which occurred in my last walk in Northumberland. Being tired, I came to a lone cottage, which had, however, the inscription, " Licensed to sell tea and tobacco," over the little porch. I looked in, and asked them if they would make me a cup of tea. This they readily agreed to do, and going to their store, I soon had everything I could wish. While refreshing myself, my eye wandered over the room, which served alike for parlour, bedroom, and kitchen, the groceries being kept in the lean-to. Box-beds had been discarded for two well-appointed four-posters, very different from the gaunt skeletons, with drabby shawls doing duty for curtains, one sees so often in southern cottages. But what struck me most of all were the books. Not only was there a good bookcase, with Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," and the "History of England," in three volumes, well bound, but on a little table by my side I observed Good Words, the Sunday Magazine, St Paul's Magazine, "The Holy Grail," and "The Old Curiosity Shop." I was not surprised to learn that these people were good Presbyterians, and staunch believers in the value of education. The father was taking his rest after his midday meal, reading the newspaper, and I fell into conversation with him and his wife. They told me that their children, a boy and a girl, had to walk every day six or seven miles to school at Whittingham, but they did not speak of it as a hardship, or as an excuse for neglecting to send their children. As to the young people themselves, they evidently loved learning all the more since it had cost them such an effort to obain it.

It was in the churchyard of the parish where they went to school that I met with the following inscription:—

"Sacred to the Memory
of
JAMES MITCHELL, Teacher, Branton,
Son of William and Mary Mitchell,
Who died 15th of August 1853, aged 26 years.

Me was a young man of cultivated and refined mind, well aware of the importance of his profession. He discharged his duties efficiently, gained the affections of his pupils, and the respect of all who knew him. 'Having kept the faith,' he died in the full hope of attaining a 'crown of glory.'"

All honour to the land that honours the schoolmaster: What can give to England's peasantry the intelligence, the self-respect, the self-reliance, the home comfort which makes Northumbria a land of Goshen in our agricultural Egypt?

Changes wide and deep may be in store for us, but this we know—they will all be delusive without the aid of the schoolmaster.

"From the pains
And faithful care of unambitious schools,
Instructing simple childhood's ready ear,
Thence look for these beneficent results."