Farmers' Dates
The farmers' calender has been changed a good deal by recent practices ; and of all the months February has lost most of its importance. I quoted the other day an old tag about the month, and have just come upoii another that goes back yet earlier in history. It is this :
" On St. Valentine's Day cast beam on clay On St. Chad sow good or bad.
Oats sown last in the dust of March."
Incidentally, " last " and " March " are a glorious example of assonance in lieu of rhyme. That St. Chad, whose festivkl is on March 2nd, should provide the, last of the sowing days for anything but oats would hardly be accepted today. Perhaps it never was. Dr. Ruston, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Leeds University, one of our best historians of ancient farms, records that barley was sown between the Feast of Purification and Pentecost. The farmer, it will be noticed, paid close attention to the festivals of the Church. It is a curious corroboration of the habits of mediaeval farmers that our modern phenologists have argued that barley ought to be sown► when the blackthorn flowers. It was out this year on some warm hedgesides by St. Valentine's Day.
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