The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat.

  • Walter William Skeat
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that the Normaus, as a race, stood aloof from field- work, which they l^ft to the Saxon peasantry. Of the various agricultural implements used by the Saxons w^e will first take the plough, a word which strangely enough seems to be of an uncertain continental origin, the true old English name (‘'sool” “ furrow-er ”) being only represented—as “zool”—in the local speech of Somerset and the adjacent counties. If we want to ascertain the pedigree of the plough, we must first trace it back from its modern types to the rudest forms of plough still known, or recently known, in Great Britain; we can then the more satisfactorily compare these simpler forms with those used by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. The now fast disappearing old-style English plough, of which there were a hundred different kinds, is in actual use in more than one part of the Sussex Downs, where it is drawn, as at Chyngton near Seaford,^ by a team of oxen. In Sussex the ^ The present owner of the magnificent black ox-team of Chyng- ton (]\Ir. E. J. Gorringe, J.P.), courteously sent me the following information : his father and he had between them worked oxen in the neighbourhood (though not on the same farm) for upwards of sixty years, the farm at Chyngton being very hilly, and the gradients very steep, and oxen being better at a dead pull than horses. Half a century ago, upwards of twenty oxen were being worked on Chyng- ton Farm, rollers being very dear, and the treading of the oxen therefore more necessary to break up the ground ; they are not now shoed, as was then the rule. The breed now kept is a South Wales mountain breed of black cattle called “runts,” which have more
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