THE HARVEST 83
laid out on the ground to dry a little before being put into a
convenient stream to rot away the fleshy part. This was
vigorously rubbed away, and the remainder dried thoroughly,*
and then beaten so as to get the fibres clean and separate. Then it
was ready to hang up in " strikes " to finish drying, before it was
combed out and ready for the spinning-wheel.1 Meanwhile the
men-folk were busy weeding in the two fields under cultivation;
they used two long sticks, the one held in the left hand had a
forked end, while the other had a small curved blade. With these
they worked up and down their strips, cleaning the corn of dock
and other weeds.2
With the coming of August the peasant's activities reached
their climax. Once again the demands made upon him by his
lord were often very heavy. He had to appear in person again
and again to gather in the lord's crops—and, although he usually
worked one or two days more a week from August to Michaelmas
than at other times in the year, this was not enough, and he had
to give several extra days of his time as a boon or gift to his lord.
And further, he had to come with all his family: everyone able to
work, save perhaps the housewife, was pressed into service for
so many days. This made the getting-in of his own crops a more
difficult and anxious matter, and work during these crucial weeks
must have been wellnigh unending. The scythes were at work
mowing down the barley, rye, oats, peasT and beans, but the
wheat was cut with a reap-hook or sickle as in recent times. The
ear was cut off high up on the stalk leaving the straw standing.
The author of Seneschaucie speaks of five people as making a
team for this work, which suggests four to cut and one to bind.
Men working thus, he says, can gather some two acres of corn a
day.3 The cocks and sheaves were small so that they could dry
the more quickly, and be the more easily carried from the field.4
The band tying the sheaf together is said to have been twice the
1 For full details see Bartholomew Anglicus, Medieval Lore, ed. R. Steele,
106. Cf. Chaucer's Pardoner (C.T. Prologue, 676), whose yellow hair hung
smoothly "as dooth a strike of flex".
2 See illustration, Luttrell Psalter, PI. 96. Here again Fitzherbert's
Husbandry, § 20, has much to tell us of "wedes as thistyls, dockes, kedlokes,
cocledrake, darnolde, gouldes, haudoddes, dogfenell, mather, ter, and dyvers
other small wedes ". Kedloke=charlock; cocledrake=cockle; mather=dog-
fennel ; ter=tares; gouldes=marigolds.
3 Op. cit. 69. * Ibid. 97; Fleta, Bk. II, cap. Si, § 2.
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