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CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE FIELDS
What was Ancient Britain? – Marshes and bittern – Oak forest – Pines – Savage country – Cornfield – Fire – Ice – Forest – Worms – Paleolithic family – The first farmers – Alfred the Great's first Government agricultural leaflet – Dr. Johnson – Prince Charlie's time – Misery of our forefathers – Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages – Patrick Miller – Tennyson's Northern Farmer– Flourishing days of 1830 to 1870 – Derelict farmhouses and abandoned crofts – Where have the people gone? – Will they come back?
WHEN the eyes of man first beheld Britain, what sort of country was this of ours? It is very interesting to try to imagine what it was like, but of course it is a very difficult task. Still it is worth the attempt, for we ought to know something of what has been done by our forefathers.
Where the great rivers Thames, Humber, Tyne, Forth, Clyde, Mersey, and Severn, approached the seashore they lost themselves in wildernesses of desolate, dreary fenlands. Here a small scrubby wood of willow, birch, and alder; there a miles-wide stretch of reeds and undrained marsh intersected by sluggish, lazy rivers, or varied by stagnant pools. The bittern boomed in those marshes. Herons, geese, swans, ducks, and aquatic birds of all sorts found what is now Chelsea a paradise, only disturbed by the eagle, harrier-hawk, vulture, and the like.
Neither at the mouth nor even much higher up in its valley-course, was a river a steady stream in a defined bed. Such beds as it had were probably four or five times their present width; they would be quite irregular, meandering about, changing at every flood, full of islands, loops, backwaters, and continually interrupted by snags of trees.
The rolling hills of the lowlands would be an almost unbroken forest of oak, except where perhaps level land and the absence of drainage produced a marsh or horrible peat-moss. But when we say forest, we do not mean a glorified Richmond Park.
In good soil there might indeed be tall and magnificent trees. But it would be quite impossible to see them! The giants of the forest would be concealed in an inextricable tangle of young trees, brushwood, fallen logs, creepers, and undergrowth. Where the soil was sandy or stony, it might be a scrub rather than a forest, of gnarled, twisted, and stunted oaks, or possibly thickets of sloe, birch, rowan, hawthorn, brambles, and briers.
Every stream would be "wild water" leaping down waterfalls and cutting out irregular, little woody ravines. Here and there boulders and escarpments of rock would break through the forest soil, which would be mossy, thick with undergrowth, and entangled with rotting fallen trunks and branches, crossing at every conceivable angle. The higher hills were covered by a dreary, sombre pine forest. It was of a monotonous, desolate character. Greenish-grey tufts of Old Man's Beard lichen hung from the branches. The ground, treacherous, and broken by boulders, peaty hollows, and dead logs, would be shrouded in a soft, thick cushion of feathery Mosses, with Blaeberry, Ferns, Trientalis, Linnea, Dwarf Cornel, and other rare plants. Through it descended raging and destructive torrents which here might be checked and foamed over dead logs, whilst in another place they cut out bare earth-escarpments or started new waterfalls which ate back into the hills behind.
At the summit of the higher hills, bare rock crags projected out of occasional alpine grassy slopes, or irregular terraces, ravines, and gullies. Below, these alpine ravines ended in a peat-moss, which scattered, dwarfed, distorted, and miserable-looking Scotch Firs and Birches painfully endeavoured to colonize. Here and there on very steep hillsides, wiry, tussocky grass might be growing instead of forest or peat.
A horrible, forbidding, and desolate land, where Deer, Irish elk, bison, bear, wolf, boar, wolverine, badger, and fox, alone enjoyed themselves.
Now consider our country to-day. Mark the "trim little fields"; "that hedge there must have been clipt about eighty years"; "The lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England – line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier."67 The road, carefully macadamized, sweeps on correct and straight or gracefully curving from neat village to countrytown. In the heart of the country the roadsides are scraped bare to produce that hideous tidiness which is dear to the soul of the County Council roadman. That is if an individual whose life is spent in stubbing up roses, briers, and every visible wild flower, can possibly possess a soul! Those fields without a rock, or even a projecting stone, have been drained, dug over, and levelled with the greatest possible care. The very rivers have been straightened and embanked; the rows of pollarded willows have been planted; they may, when in flood, overflow, but the results are very soon no longer visible. Even on the moors and in the depths of the Highlands, black-faced sheep, draining, and the regular burning of the heather, have quite transformed our country.
The original woods have long since vanished: those which now exist are mostly quite artificial plantations, and the very trees are often strangers to Britain.
The story of the Herculean labour by which our country, once as wild and as savage as its early inhabitants the Icenians and Catieuchlanians (and probably with lineaments as barbarous as those of the Coritanian and Trinobant), has been changed to peaceful, fertile meadowlands or tidy arable, is one long romance. To tell it properly would require a book to itself. In this chapter we shall only try to sketch what may have happened on one particular cornfield which exists on the trap-rocks of Kilbarchan, near Glasgow.68 The reader must bear in mind that even this is a very ambitious attempt! It is an exceedingly difficult undertaking.
The subsoil in this particular cornfield (on Pennell Brae) lies upon the trap-rock formed by one of those gigantic lava-flows which cover that part of Renfrewshire. The whole district at that time must have been exactly like Vesuvius during the late eruption. Its scenery in this early miocene period consisted of glowing molten rock, accompanied by flames of fire, electrical storms, clouds of gas, dust, ashes, and superheated steam.
Every plant and every animal must have been exterminated. That was unfortunate, for, at that time, Pines, Oaks, Guelder Rose, Willows, as well as Sequoias allied to the Mammoth tree and Sassafras, may have lived in Scotland along with tapirs, opossums, marsupials, and other extraordinary beasts.
When the lava cooled and became trap-rock, it was at once attacked by frost, by wind, and by rain. Then by a very slow process of colonization, vegetation slowly and gradually crept over the trap-rock and rich mould and plant remains accumulated. At a much later date, there was another wholesale destruction. This time, it was the great Ice Sheet coming down from the Highland hills. Probably it drove heavily over the top of Pennell Brae and worked up into fine mud and powder every vestige of the miocene vegetation.
The very rocks themselves would be scratched, polished, and rounded off. When the glaciers melted away and left the surface free, it would consist of these rounded rocks alternating with clay-filled hollows. The trap-rock below would be covered by a subsoil due to particles of trap, of Highland and other mud, with remains of the miocene vegetation. Upon this surface, frost, wind, sunshine, and rain would again begin to perform their work.
But the subsoil, thus wonderfully formed by fire in the miocene, by frost in the glacial, and by weather in our own geological period, very soon felt the protecting and sheltering effect of a plant-covering.
First a green herb rooted itself every here and there amidst the desolate boulder-clay or perhaps in a crevice where good earth had accumulated. Then the scattered colonists began to form groups; soon patches of green moss united them. Then a continuous green carpet could be traced over a few yards here and perhaps on a few feet somewhere else. But when things had got as far as this, progress became much more rapid, and soon the whole site of the future cornfield was covered over by a continuous green carpet. Only, every here and there, hard stones and uncompromising trap-rocks remained still protruding from the green covering.
In another chapter this first covering of the soil will be described at length.
So far it has been subsoil and underlying rock, but now the roots begin to disintegrate and work up the subsoil; the earthworm has his chance, and forms true soil. On this particular hillside, the water would drain away and there would be no danger of mosses strangling and choking the Blaeberry and the Heather. The worm flourished and multiplied, and the soil became rich and black. Here and there a Sloe or a Rowan, or Poplar, or perhaps Alder and Birch, began to appear. In certain places Whins and Brooms, Brambles and Briers, diversified the hillside. Then a few Scotch firs began to push their way up, through the thickets. At first they were very small and stunted, but as each one formed a dense, deep-going mass of hardy roots, they were able to investigate the riches of the subsoil. Every year the amount of leaf-mould above increased, until the original moss-covering was utterly destroyed and a pine forest (see Chap. XXVIII.) occupied Pennell Brae.
About this time, a paleolithic family may have encamped on the side of the cliff near a little stream which can still be traced. The camp was only a few sticks and branches, with a skin or two for shelter from the north wind. The women lopped down fir branches for firewood, and cut up the young trees. The children set fire to the shrubs on dry days and paths ran here and there through the forest. This would be about 198,000 B.C.
Every year meant a further very gradual, slow destruction of the pine forest.
About 60,000 B.C., our paleolithic hunters with chipped-stone weapons would be obliged to travel further to the north. New savages with round heads and polished-stone weapons would make life in Renfrewshire too uncertain and too diversified by massacres. These last possessed seed corn, a few fruit trees as well as goats, cattle, and perhaps a few hardy, shaggy ponies. At first these settlers would be obliged to live in a lake dwelling, say in Linwood Moss, which is close at hand. They would then drive their cattle over the surrounding district, and camp in slightly-built villages. Near at hand, probably on the hill, they would build a (round) camp or fort, where they could fly for safety in the continual fights and invasions of the period.
Sooner or later a village would be built near Pennell Brae. One summer day the villagers attacked the wood that covered it; they cut down all the small brushwood and hacked through the bark of every big tree. After a few weeks, when the trees were dead, the wood was set on fire. Then a rough fold made of rude wattle and daub was formed, and every night the cattle and sheep were driven in.
After three or four years, this fold would be ploughed up by exceedingly rude instruments. Barley or certain kinds of wheat would be grown year after year until the crop was not worth gathering. When that happened, another fold would be ploughed up. Probably the whole of Pennell Brae went through this rude sort of agricultural treatment at one time or another. At the same time goats, cattle, and the demand for firewood, obtained in the most reckless and wasteful manner, would have very seriously interfered with the forest.
Although no doubt great changes for the better were introduced, the spearmen of Wallace of Elderslie close by had their "infield" land, which was practically the sheepfold as above described, and their "outfield" or grazing commons. Even down to 1745 the above system was practised (see below).
But when men's minds were stirred up and invigorated by the great Revolution of 1788-1820, all sorts of new agricultural discoveries were made. Yet the cornfield on Pennell Brae was probably not drained or enclosed by stone walls and hedges until 1830 to 1840! About 1870, it was more profitable to its owner than it has ever been since, though even now it forms part of our British farmlands which yield, on the whole, a larger amount of oats per acre than those of any other country in the world (except possibly Denmark).
Let us however look a little closer into the long, long period during which the "fire and stone-axe methods" of farming prevailed. Before the Romans landed there seem to have been no towns.69 There was but little cultivation, for the Britons wore skins and lived chiefly on milk and flesh.
In the time of King Alfred, the increase of population made it necessary to take more trouble about farming, so we find a description of what the good farmer ought to do. We might call this the very first Government leaflet, and it has led to the Agricultural Leaflets published by the Board of Agriculture for Great Britain and Ireland.
"Sethe wille wyrcan wastbaere lond ateo hin of tham acre aefest sona fearn and thornas and figrsas swasame weods."
He was to clear off fern, bracken, thorns, sloe, hawthorn, bramble, whin, and weeds. The names of the months give some idea of Anglo-Saxon methods of farming. May was Thrimylce, because the cows might then be milked thrice a day. August was Weodmonath (weed-month), November Blotmonath, or blood-month, because the cattle were then killed to supply salt beef for winter time.70
Very much later in history, after our English friends had laid waste and depopulated Scotland, so that woods sprang up again everywhere, and again long after that time when the gradual increase of population had again utterly destroyed those woods, a certain Dr. Johnson travelled from Carlisle to Edinburgh. This gentleman declared that he saw no tree between those places. This statement must not be taken too literally, for he had written a dictionary and considered himself not merely the Times but an Encyclopædia Britannica as well.71
The Earl of Dundonald (in 1795) thus describes the agriculture of 1745 (Prince Charlie's days): "The outfield land never receives any manure. After taking from it two or three crops of grain it is left in the state it was in at reaping the last crop, without sowing thereon grass-seeds for the protection of any sort of herbage. During the first two or three years a sufficiency of grass to maintain a couple of rabbits per acre is scarcely produced. In the course of some years it acquires a sward, and after having been depastured for some years more, it is again submitted to the same barbarous system of husbandry" (that is used as a fold and then ploughed up). In the same year (1745) in Meigle parish, the land was never allowed to lie fallow: neither pease, grass, turnips, nor potatoes were raised. No cattle were fattened. A little grain (oats or barley) was exported. In 1754 or thereabouts, there was only one cart in the parish of Keithhall. Everything was carried about on ponies' backs, as is the case nowadays in the most unsettled parts of Canada. The country in places was almost impassable. Bridges did not exist, and the roads were mere tracks. In Rannoch the tenants had no beds, but lay on the ground on couches of heather or fern. These houses were built of wattle and daub, and so low that people had to crawl in on hands and feet and could not stand upright.
"In the best times that class of people seldom could indulge in animal food, and they were in use to support themselves in part with the blood taken from their cattle at different periods, made into puddings or bread with a mixture of oatmeal. Their common diet was either oatmeal, barley, or bear, cleared of the husks in a stone trough by a wooden mallet, and boiled with milk; coleworts or greens also contributed much to their subsistence, and cabbages when boiled and mashed with a little oatmeal."72 Potatoes were introduced in Dumfriesshire some time after 1750, and the use of lime as manure at about the same time. Even in 1775 the roads were such that no kind of loaded carriages could pass without the greatest difficulty.
There is a most fascinating account in Dr. Singer's work of a strong man's difficulties in starting reasonable agriculture in Dumfriesshire about the year 1785. This was Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton. (It was on Dalswinton Loch that he tried the very first steamboat.) "When I went to view my purchase, I was so much disgusted for eight or ten days that I then meant never to return to this county. A trivial accident set me to work, and I have in a great manner resided here ever since… I have now gone over all of this estate, and this I have done without the aid of a tenant… I need not inform you that the first steps in improvement are draining when necessary, inclosing sufficiently, removing stones, roots, rubbish of every kind, and liming… These operations cost me, I reckon, about £11 per acre upon an average; and I lay my account with being repaid all my expenses by the first three crops, but at any rate by the fourth. When the land which I make arable will give at least (if brought from a state of nature) twenty times the rent when I began to improve it."
Major-General Dirom, of Mount Annan, writing from that place in 1811, says that all over Scotland for about thirty years (from 1780-1810) he has seen "cultivation extending from the valleys to the hills, commons inclosed, wastes planted, and heaths everywhere giving way to corn: … extension of towns and villages, by new lines of excellent roads, magnificent bridges and inland navigation … our rapidly increasing population, by our now exporting great quantities of grain from parts of Scotland into which it was formerly imported, and by the superior comfort and abundance which appear in the domestic economy of the inhabitants." If you read any newspaper of to-day published in Canada or in the Argentine Republic, you find exactly the same process at work, and the same enthusiasm about it. Even in 1840-1850 all these improvements were still vigorously going on.
Look at Tennyson's Northern Farmer (old style): —
"'An I a stubb'd Thurnaby waäste.
Dobbut looök at the waäste, theer warnt no feeäd for a cow,
Nowt at all but bracken an fuzz, an looök at it now.
Warnt worth nowt a haäcre and now there's lots o feeäd,
Four scoor yows upon it an some on it down i seeäd."
Even in his days, the good farmer was following King Alfred's directions. About 1830-1850 most of the land was in good bearing, and the roads were sufficiently good to admit of the stage-coach with four horses. But they after all lasted but a very short time before the railways again entirely altered the conditions of country life.
As we have seen, rents were in places, five times as large in 1820-1830 as they had ever been previously.73 Therefore it was that about this time the gentlemen's houses were in many places rebuilt on a more magnificent scale. Then also were begun those circles and strips, or belts of plantation, which are now conspicuous features of the Scotch lowlands. An enormous majority of these plantations are not more than eighty years old. I think avenues were planted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fashion about 1820 was to destroy them as unnatural, at least in England. Unfortunately no respect was paid to the economic practice of forestry, with very unfortunate results for the proprietor.
The rest of this chapter is necessarily unpleasant and distressing reading, but it is necessary if we are to understand the romance of the fields. As one wanders over the grassy pastures of Southern Scotland, where the black-faced sheep foolishly start away, and where one's ears are irritated by the scolding complaints of the curlew or whaup, it is no rare accident to find a few broken-down walls, a clump of nettles, and badly grown ash trees. That was once a farm steading, where a healthy troop of children used to play together after walking three or more miles barefoot to school. The ash trees were planted at every farm "toon," for the Scottish spear was a very necessary weapon until recent times. Often also, upon some monotonous grouse moor, one sees the ridges that betoken a little croft where a cottager lived.
In one parish (Troqueer) over seventy country cottages have been abandoned during the lifetime of a middle-aged person.
Many families, of which the laird was often the best farmer in the district and his own factor, have disappeared. The fine houses, with their parks and shootings, are let to strangers, who come for a few weeks or months, and then leave it in charge of a caretaker. Before this recent development, the "family" lived all the year round upon the land; they spent their income chiefly in wages to the country people. Where once forty or fifty people were employed all the year, there are now but three or four. The big house with shuttered windows and weed-grown walks, is a distressing and saddening spectacle.
Of course such changes must occur. The farmer's and the cottar's children are now carrying out in Canada, Australia, or the United States, what was done in Scotland from 1780-1830. India, South Africa, and China have been developed by the brains and hold the graves of many of the laird's sons.
Yet this poor old country, abandoned of her children, shows signs of revival. Both the poor and the rich are beginning to find out that a country life is healthier, quite as interesting, and sometimes quite as profitable as the overcrowded city with its manufactories, mills, and offices. All new countries are beginning to fill up, and there is some hope that a new and vigorous development of farming may make the countryside once more vigorous, prosperous, and full of healthy children.
