Haymaking

[wolfinthewood]

After so much rain, a fine summer’s day, and a chance to get out into the hills. In the Derbyshire uplands, they were using the brief two-day respite from the rain to get on with the hay-making.

Stephen Duck was an eighteenth-century labourer poet. The title page of the seventh edition of his Poems on Several Subjects describes him as ‘Lately a poor Thresher in a Barn in the County of Wilts, at the Wages of Four Shillings and Sixpence per Week’. This is Duck on hay-making:

The Birds salute us as to Work we go,
And a new life seems in our Breasts to glow.
A-cross one’s shoulder hangs a Scythe well steel’d,
The Weapon destin’d to unclothe the Field;
T’other supports the Whetstone, Scrip, and Beer,
That for our Scythes, and these ourselves to chear.
And now the Field design’d our Strength to try
Appears, and meets at last our longing eye;
The Grass and Ground each chearfully surveys,
Willing to see which way th’Advantage lays.
As the best man, each claims the foremost place,
And our first work seems but a sportive Race.
With rapid force our well-whet Blades we drive,
Strain every nerve, and blow for blow we give:
Tho’ but this Eminence the foremost gains,
Only t’excel the rest in Toil and Pains.
But when the scorching Sun is mounted high,
And no kind Barns with friendly Shades are nigh,
Our weary Scythes entangle in the grass,
And streams of sweat run trickling down apace;
Our sportive Labour we too late lament,
And wish that Strength again we vainly spent.

Stephen Duck (1705–1756)

from The Thresher’s Labour (1730)


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Comments

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

What a great poem-- really gives you a sense that he knew what he was writing about.

I grew up partly on a farm in Virginia, and I remember long sweaty August days spent haying. As a teenager, my job was to ride in the wagon and stack the bales of hay as the baling machine spat them out.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Hi - nice to have you back. I see you had a good time in Scotland - excellent.

I like Duck. As you say, he knows what he is talking about, and it shows.

I went haymaking once, just for a day, some years back. It was a piece of research for a project I still haven't completed. I remember it vividly. There was rain imminent, and it was a race to get the hay raked together and baled. I was one of the rakers - pretty hard work, but oddly satisfying. I vividly recall the amazing yeasty smell of a barn half-full of hay, at the end of the day.

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

Yeah! Unfortunately I'm slightly allergic to hay-- it gives me rashes and makes my eyes itch and water-- but even so, it's a lovely smell. And when young, there is no joy like building haybale forts in the barn...