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Page 30
and he is careful to remind you in concluding his chapter of Huswifely
Admonitions that you had always better smile than scold:
Much brawling with servant, what man can abide?
Pay home when thou fightest, but love not to chide.
The whole matter of servants is amusing or rueful study nowadays,
accordingly as one looks at servants. Their treatment under Tusser's
handling brings the husbandman poet very near to Hesiod, in whose time
servitude was not called by any other name. Tusser's huswife, warned
by the matin cock, called up her maids and men at four in the summer,
at five in the winter. She packed them off to bed at ten or nine at
night, according to the season, and, it would appear, to bed in the
dark. She made her own candles, and feared also a fire, which will
account for that. There was no early tea for Mistress Tusser's maids,
let me tell you:
Some slovens from sleeping no sooner get up
But hand is in aumbry and nose is in cup.
Nothing of the kind with Mrs. Tusser. On the other hand, hard work all
round: "Sluts' corner" to be ridded; sweeping, dusting, mop-twirling,
Let some to peel hemp, or else rushes to twine,
To spin or to card, to seething of brine;
and as for the men:
Let some about cattle, some pastures to view,
Some malt to be grinding against ye do brew.
And so to breakfast. The morning star was the signal for it; and a
hasty meal was expected of you:
Call servants to breakfast, by day-star appear,
A snatch, and to work--fellows tarry not here.
You had porridge and a scrap of meat, and if you laid hands on
something sweeter, look out for Mrs. Tusser:
"What tack in a pudding?" saith greedy gut-wringer:
Give such ye wot what, ere a pudding he finger.
And, summarily, of breakfast there is this to be understood, that it
is a thing of grace, not of custom:
No breakfast of custom provide for to save,
But only for such as deserveth to have.
Very near Hesiod indeed!
For your dinner at noon you were more hospitably served. First of all,
it was ready for you:
By noon see your dinner be ready and neat:
Let meat tarry servant not servant his meat.
And you were to have enough--plain fare, but enough.
Give servants no dainties, but give them enow;
Too many chaps wagging do beggar the plow;
but even here you would get according to your deserts. If you were
lazy at your threshing, you would be given a "flap and a trap,"
whatever those may be. And you were expected to eat the trencher bare:
Some gnaweth and leaveth, some crusts and some crumbs:
Eat such their own leavings, or gnaw their own thumbs.
In the hot weather you had time for sleep allowed you:
From May to mid-August an hour or two
Let Patch sleep a snatch, howsoever ye do.
Though sleeping one hour refresheth his song
Yet trust not Hob Grouthead for sleeping too long.
Then came afternoon work, and at last supper. Here the mistress might
unbend somewhat; for, as Tusser puts it:
Whatever God sendeth, be merry withal.
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