92 THE PEASANTS YEAR
they could obtain for themselves as they wandered over the open
fallows and the waste surrounding the village.
Of all his animals, however, in some ways the pig (then as now)
ranked highest in the peasant's eyes, for no animal was so easily
fed, and no animal so easily put on flesh and was so soon prepared
for the slaughter according to medieval standards. The village
swineherd1 was of the first importance in village life: he it was
who gathered together the swine of his neighbours and led them
off into the woods when these were thrown open to them, and
the acorns were falling. At other times he drove them on to the
waste or on the fallows to get what they could; for, unless they
could obtain a great deal of food in this way, it was considered
highly unprofitable to keep them. Only during the hardest
months after Christmas was it thought economically sound to
supply them with anything but waste and what they could pick
up outside the house and on the manor. Thorold Rogers tells
us that "it would seem that the medieval farmer reckoned on
two to four bushels as necessary in order to bring what we should
call marketable pigs into sufficient condition ",2 We may suspect,
however, that those pigs which were not destined for the market
seldom received such luxurious feeding, and that they were
slaughtered in what we should consider to be a miserable
condition.
These were theii^most valuable accessory food supplies after
their corn, but to these we must add poultry of many kinds.
Chickens were everywhere: we are constantly surprised at the
large number of eggs a peasant has to produce at given seasons
of the year, and the ideal of Henri IV that every peasant should
have a chicken for his pot must have been a fairly widespread
possibility in the thirteenth century. Walter of Henley tells us
that a hen ought to lay 180 eggs a year, but the author of
Hosebonderie is content with 115 eggs and 7 chicks. Besides these
chickens, geese were fairly common, and sometimes numerous
enough to demand the presence of a village gooseherd.3
1 For the swineherd's duties see Walter of Henley, 113, For illustration,
see Luttrell Psalter, PL 14.
2 Rogers, Prices, i, 337: " Some idea of the condition of these pigs may be
gathered from the note in vol. n, p. 383, in which we learn that 35 pigs gave
180 Ib. of lard, that is, a little more than 5 Ib. apiece."
8 See picture of gooseherd in Luttrell Psalter, PL 91.