260 MERRIE ENGLAND
nor sell there. But the land is always there: harsh, exacting, in-
satiate, and rapidly overcoming the puny efforts man can put into
it unless he is constantly fighting. And the fight is unending—-
the harvest is but the signal for the autumn ploughing; and the
autumn ploughing for the sowing, and so on. Season follows
season: the rhythmic passage of the year drags in its wake the rural
society. And this society, now as then, is a unit, a little world of
its own. Necessarily the great world affects it, and the fair once a
year or the weekly markets take the villager some miles out of his
own fields just as they did in the Middle Ages. But otherwise, the
village is the unit, and there in the main life goes on as it always
has and (seemingly, to the peasant at least) always will. There are
a few days or hours of happiness, but on the morrow the old
routine reasserts itself. Always, as the day wears on to evening,
in the falling dusk the horses and oxen are put into their stalls
for the night. The cows are milked and bedded down. Lights
move about the farm outbuildings as the tired men assure them-
selves that everything is well for the night. Meanwhile, the
housewife, busied at her fire, tends the soup and makes all ready
for the men's return. When at last they come and gather round
the table, set out with its rude and meagre cutlery and platters,
the evening meal begins—bread, soup, cheese, beer—the same
meal eaten by peasants since the beginning of time as it seems.
There they talk or jest or argue as the occasion serves; and, after
the meal, perhaps sit awhile by the dying embers before fatigue
calls them to sleep, only in order to begin yet another day.
That is the background: and in that endless routine most of
their life is spent, and so it was with their ancestors six centuries
ago. There are, however, a few days now and then given over to
festivity, and a few hours snatched from this grim travail with
the soil. It is to these that we must now turn, in order to see yet
another side of medieval peasant life.
We may well start with John Stow's translation of the famous
account by Fitzstephen of the manner in which the Londoner of
the twelfth century refreshed himself when work was put on one
side.
Every yeare also at Shrovetuesday, (that we may begin with
childrens sports, seeing we al have beene children,) the schoole boyes
do bring Cockes of the game to their Master, and all the forenoone