An easy-going reader, with no taste for agricultural inquiries, might admire the above picturesque lines and then pass on, counting as a trifle what is really a most important feature of early social history—the use of the ox as a beast of draught. Let us pursue the question a little, for, although the spectacle described was apparently commonplace to the poet, yet, to us, a ploughing ox is undoubtedly a rarity. Some two or three teams in Sussex, perchance a similar number in Dorset, and, it may be, an odd team in the West Country, seem to complete the census of working oxen.
By means of personal investigations made in various counties, and by the collection of scattered particulars given in certain periodicals, I have endeavoured to determine at what dates the bullock was discarded as a draught animal. It may be well to give an epitome of the results, premising that what is now an exceptional occurrence was, at no remote period, the general rule, just as it is still the rule in the agricultural districts of Germany, Austria, and Southern France, not to speak of such distant lands as Cape Colony and Ceylon.
Commencing with the “county of broad acres,” we find that Arthur Young speaks of having seen many oxen in harness between York and Beverley in the year 1768. Waggons were drawn by two oxen and two horses; for tillage, oxen alone were deemed more serviceable[1244]. A little later, in 1788, Marshall gives a somewhat different testimony. Oxen were still preferred for drawing farm carriages and timber waggons along the roads in the Vale of Pickering, but not a single ox was left at field work[1245]. Near Whitby, however, bullocks were attached to the plough so late as 1826[1246], and for hauling stones from the quarry, in 1858[1247]. A single team was still engaged in quarry work in 1895[1248].
Coming to the neighbouring county of Lincoln, draught oxen were still employed near Brigg in 1853[1249], and five years later the writer’s father saw a plough-team in regular work at North (or Nun) Ormsby, near Louth. The particulars from the Midlands touch more recent times. For Stratford-on-Avon the last recorded year is 1895[1250]. A friend noticed a team at work near Oxford, in 1881, and I have a record from Helmdon (Northants), for 1902. At Hockliffe, near Luton, in Bedfordshire, oxen were constantly employed by an eccentric farmer who died so recently as 1909. The feature was, however, admittedly an anachronism: the farmer in question would not use machinery, and was, in other respects, a follower of old-world customs.
The West Country supplies records for the year 1895; in the Vale of Pewsey it is asserted that more ox-teams than horse-teams were seen at the plough in that year, though the ox was not used for road-work. In 1909 I could not find a single team; inquiries showed that the year 1897 or 1898 must have marked the change over, so that either there must have been an abrupt reversal of custom, or, more probably, the statement with respect to the year 1895 was incorrect. There, as in Dorset, red and white Herefords represented the breed most in favour[1251]. An eye-witness reports a team from East Ilsley (Berks.), for 1906. During the years 1887-8, I occasionally saw oxen ploughing on the Cotswolds, and, a few years previously, Devonshire farmers still chose bullocks for heavy land.
Labouring oxen were not uncommon in Hampshire and Dorsetshire about twenty years ago. Two oxen were yoked to the plough, while, to increase the speed, a horse was attached as leader. The case of Essex is peculiar. One is bound to believe that bullock labour was formerly as common in that county as elsewhere, nevertheless Arthur Young informs us that the Essex farmers of the eighteenth century ridiculed Lord Clare’s introduction of oxen to his estate at Braintree. It was only when the experiment resulted in a great saving of money as compared with the general expenditure on horse-labour that the example was reluctantly copied. Young says that the importation of the oxen from Gloucestershire, where Lord Clare had purchased them “with all their geers,” was “a stroke of agriculture most unusual in Essex.” On one occasion, a waggon drawn by horses became “sett” in the village. The horses were taken off, “and the oxen clapt too (sic), who to the amazement to the beholders, drew it out in triumph[1252].” One cannot help thinking that the popularity of horse-labour around Braintree was a chronological inversion, applicable only to a limited area. At whatever period introduced, working oxen remained in the Essex districts of Romford and Ilford until the year 1830[1253], and probably later. In the sister county of Kent, bullocks were worked near Tunbridge Wells until the year 1886[1254].
It is to the county of Sussex, however, that we must look for the lingering exploitation of ox-labour. During the summer of 1908, remembering what I had witnessed about twenty years previously, I made careful inquiries about the disuse of working-oxen by Sussex farmers. The result proved that two teams at least were still under the yoke, one at Housedean Farm, Falmer, and the other, which I did not actually see, at Itford Farm, near Rodmell, a few miles North of Newhaven. The latter team has now been disbanded. In February, 1910, Dr W. Heneage Legge, of Ringmer, informed me that teams could still be seen daily near Brighton. Later, in August of that year, I found a single team retained—for sentimental reasons, probably—at Exceat New Barn, near West Dean. The Falmer cattle are black, long-horned animals, apparently of Welsh breed. The old Sussex red cattle are no longer employed. The oxen are not shod at the present day, though it is but a few years since the custom was abandoned. This is a point to which we shall return. At Pyecombe and Pangdean, bullocks were last worked, and shod, about eight years since. “A few years ago,” was the answer given at Saddlescombe, and again at Sompting. At Steyning, the blacksmith had not shod oxen for twenty years, nor had his brother craftsman of Ditchling treated bullocks for a decade or more. Here the details may stop; it is perhaps well that they should be given, as an aid to the future historian.
But what of the past? For it is practically certain that from the earliest historical times onwards to the eighteenth century the ox was pre-eminently, nay, almost entirely, the beast which was yoked to cart, plough, and harrow. There were, it is true, some exceptions, to be noted in a moment. The old illuminated manuscripts show pictures of oxen only, and the famous embroidery known as the Bayeux “tapestry” furnishes similar evidence. The animals there shown as attached to the plough, whether they represent oxen, horses, or asses, are very different from the finely drawn horses exhibited throughout the rest of the tapestry[1255]. Until the eighth century, as was stated in Chapter X., the horse was often used for food, and it was likewise kept for the saddle. Thus we may say that, while the hunter, the warrior, and the pilgrim claimed the horse for riding, the husbandman in the field was content to use the ox for draught.
The language of Domesday Book corroborates the testimony of the early manuscripts. In general, the records of that remarkable survey indicate that a painstaking assessment was taken of farming stock. The terms used in the minute inventories are extremely suggestive. The amount of land which an ox could till is called an “oxgang” or “bovata” (Lat. bos, bovis = an ox + ata). A bovata, originally “one ox’s worth,” was half a “jugum,” “a pair’s worth” (Lat. jugum = a yoke), and a quarter of a carucata (post-classical Latin, car(r)uca = a four-wheeled carriage; cf. root quatuor, whence the word was later applied to a plough, possibly because it was drawn by four oxen, or, by extension, two yoke of oxen, four abreast)[1256]. Recollections of early Mediaeval literature will emphasize the truth of our proposition. In the “Vision of William, concerning Piers the Plowman” (c. A.D. 1377), it was doubtless an ox-team which ploughed the “half-acre.” Again, in the writings of Bartholomew Anglicus (cir. A.D. 1260), there is a description of the duties of Bubulcus, the ox-herd. “He feedeth and nourisheth oxen, and bringeth them to leas and home again; and bindeth their feet with a langhaldes [M. E. langelen = to bind together; langel, lanzel = a rope or hopple] and spanells [= fetters; cf. Germ. Spannseil = a tether] and nigheth and cloggeth them while they be in pasture and leas, and yoketh and maketh them draw at the plough: and pricketh the slow with a goad, and maketh them draw even. And pleaseth them with whistling and with song, to make them bear the yoke with the better will for liking of melody of the voice.” The oxen not only “ear” (= plough) the ground, but thresh the corn by treading: Bartholomew also speaks of their use in “treading the flour[1257].” The trivial round of the ox-herd’s labours may be completed from an Old English dialogue of the eleventh century, in which the garthman is made to say: “I stand over [the oxen], waking against thieves: and then again in the early morning I betake them, well filled and watered, to the plowman[1258].” A like story is told in the anonymous “Seneschaucie,” or “The Office of Seneschal” (temp. Edw. I.), wherein it is stated that ox-herds must sleep with their oxen to guard them[1259]. If we pass by a few centuries, we get, in a passage from Shakespeare, an allusion to the traffic in draught oxen at the great fairs of England. Shallow inquires of Silence, “How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair[1260]?” And moving forward again, we have Robert Burns singing thus:
“And owsen frae the furrow’d field
Return sae dowf [= slow, heavy] and wearie O[1261].”