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Page 29
The probabilities are that he was quite right; but so long as copyhold
endured so long lasted the open fields.
Tusser's holding, and that of every husbandman in England in his time,
was self-sufficient. Not only did you eat your own mutton, make your
own souse, your own beer, cheese, butter, wine, cordials, and physic;
you built your own house, made your own roads, fenced your own lands,
contrived your own plows, wains, wagons, wheelbarrows, and all manner
of tools. But much more than that. You grew your own hemp, had your
own ropewalk, twisted your own twine; you grew your flax and wove your
linen; you tanned and dressed your own leather, cut and spun your own
wool, made, no doubt, your own clothes. Indeed, you stood four-square
to fate in Tusser's time; and in that particular, as well as in
another which I must speak of next, you were much nearer to Hesiod's
farmer than to ours. This precept of his upon the uses of your
woodland recalls Hesiod directly:
Save elm, ash and crabtree for cart and for plow;
Save step for a stile of the crotch of the bough;
Save hazel for forks, save sallow for rake;
Save hulver and thorn, whereof flail to make.
Hulver is holly. In the same section (April) he has a verse about
stone-picking which will show his encyclop�dic grip of his matter:
Where stones be too many, annoying thy land,
Make servant come home with a stone in his hand:
By daily so doing, have plenty ye shall,
Both handsome for paving and good for a wall.
He bought little or nothing, trafficked very much by barter, and had
scarcely any need for money. His men and maids lived in the house, and
if they were paid anything, he does not say so. I suppose they were
paid something, those of them who were not apprentices, bound for a
seven years' term. They stood to his wife and himself as children, had
their keep, learned their business, married each other by and by,
and probably set up for themselves with a pig and a cock and hen on
a pightle of land of the master's. It was a family relationship well
into the eighteenth century. Horace Walpole used to call his servants
his family. With the privilege of parenthood went the power of the
rod. There's no doubt about that: maid and man had it if it was
earned. In his dairy instruction Tusser gives us a list of "ten
topping guests unsent for," whose presence in the cheese will cause
Cicely to rue it. There are:
Gehazi, Lot's wife, and Argus his eyes,
Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs:
Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl,
With Bishop that burneth--ye thus know them all.
Gehazi the leper is in cheese when it is white and dry; Lot's wife
when it is too salt; Argus's eyes are obvious:
Tom Piper hath hoven and puffed up cheeks;
poor Cobler is there when it is leathery; Esau betrays himself by
hairs, Maudlin by weeping; and as for the "Bishop that burneth" the
explanation is complicated. It seems that Cicely would run after the
bishop for his blessing, and leave the milk on the fire to burn.[A]
For all these ill-timed guests you are to baste Cicely, or "tug her
a crash," or "make her seek creeks"; you "call her a slut," or "dress
her down." But you encourage her at the end with this quatrain:
"If thou, so oft beaten,
Amendest by this,
I will no more threaten,
I promise thee, Cis."
[Footnote A: A correspondent from Yorkshire gives me a better
explanation. In that county burnt milk is still said to be "bishoped."
The bishop's power of the keys is thought to be hinted.]
Fizgig, too, which is his lively name for the kitchen knave, gets the
holly-wand across his quarters when he deserves it; but Tusser seems
to feel that discipline may be overdone. It may be waste of good stick
and good pains, for:
As rod little mendeth where manners be spilt,
So naught will be naught, say and do what thou wilt;
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