What was Thomas Gray's ploughman up to?

[martian]

You'll all be familiar with Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751):

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me

(and so on for another thirty odd verses)

Now, the rest of the poem makes it sound like early summer, so what the hell is the ploughman up to? Not least, if you've a team of oxen, they'll be wiped out by the time dusk arrives, they'll have knocked off at lunchtime I'd have thought. Horses ditto. What land work would he have been busy with at this time of year? Was he on his way back from the pub? Somebody must know...

 

[Bury the Trash]

Ploughing weedy ground that was in to fallow the second time possibly, 'course if they had been pulling a direct drill they would've finished by dinner time.

Therein lies the problem because they didn't have Roundup.

 

[Muddyroads]

Sounds like a bit of BBC reporting to me!

 

[primmiemoo]

This doesn't seem to be winter work:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Rosa_Bonheur_-_Ploughing_in_Nevers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/388px-Rosa_Bonheur_-_Ploughing_in_Nevers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

 

[martian]

Ploughing weedy ground that was in to fallow the second time possibly, 'course if they had been pulling a direct drill they would've finished by dinner time.

Therein lies the problem because they didn't have Roundup.

Interestingly...Jethro Tull had invented the seed drill some twenty years earlier (around 1731), yet even a hundred years after that farmers were still broadcasting. New ideas sometimes take a while to catch on.

 

[yellowbelly]

Summer fallows (Ah, I see @Bury the Trash has beaten me to it )

Not least, if you've a team of oxen, they'll be wiped out by the time dusk arrives, they'll have knocked off at lunchtime I'd have thought. Horses ditto.

'Osses worked in 'yockins'(well, they did here in Lincolnshire anyway)......shifts, I suppose you'd call them. Maybe 2 yockins in a morning and maybe 2 or even 3 after dinner.

The men worked full days back then but the 'osses had a rest between their yockins

 

[Will 1594]

Summer fallows (Ah, I see @Bury the Trash has beaten me to it )

'Osses worked in 'yockins'(well, they did here in Lincolnshire anyway)......shifts, I suppose you'd call them. Maybe 2 yockins in a morning and maybe 2 or even 3 after dinner.

The men worked full days back then but the 'osses had a rest between their yockins

Do you still say , go yock or yoke that cart ont 82 or in our case one o t Deere’s ,
Garn yock cart wi fat boulers on “t” 69
Wheel barra still looks Wtf did you say
some of fen boys still stop at 11 for dockey . Presume at that time would be to nose bag osses or change Um if hard going ploughing

 

[Bogweevil]

You'll all be familiar with Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751):

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me

(and so on for another thirty odd verses)

Now, the rest of the poem makes it sound like early summer, so what the hell is the ploughman up to? Not least, if you've a team of oxen, they'll be wiped out by the time dusk arrives, they'll have knocked off at lunchtime I'd have thought. Horses ditto. What land work would he have been busy with at this time of year? Was he on his way back from the pub? Somebody must know...

Working the fallow, without glyphosate you would spend all summer drying out couch ridden clods.

 

[Exfarmer]

Do you still say , go yock or yoke that cart ont 82 or in our case one o t Deere’s ,
Garn yock cart wi fat boulers on “t” 69
Wheel barra still looks Wtf did you say
some of fen boys still stop at 11 for dockey . Presume at that time would be to nose bag osses or change Um if hard going ploughing

Some large farms in the fens were still using hoss’s into the 1980’s

 

[Will 1594]

Some large farms in the fens were still using hoss’s into the 1980’s

Friend of mine has only recently stopped using his old pony to go up fell to feild house to get hay out for sheep ,his knees knackered now ,so easier to get on to quad

 

[Flat 10]

Some large farms in the fens were still using hoss’s into the 1980’s

Why?

 

[Exfarmer]

Why?

I have no idea

 

[PSQ]

Do you still say , go yock or yoke that cart ont 82 or in our case one o t Deere’s ,

'Yoking time' and 'lousing time', for either end of the working day.

 

[Bald Rick]

Of course you are all thinking that he has been ploughing as in working the land .............

He could have been plowing (to use the American vernacular from where this particular etymology derives) a buxom milkmaid.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Interestingly...Jethro Tull had invented the seed drill some twenty years earlier (around 1731), yet even a hundred years after that farmers were still broadcasting. New ideas sometimes take a while to catch on.

An extra expense that turned them off ?
Remember It was back in the day when a basic implement was kept for a long time and new ones were a rare event .

Some still broadcast to this very day. Gives good ground cover .

 

[primmiemoo]

The ploughman could have been ploughing in preparation for sowing a new ley, or as already been mentioned, harrowing out moors of couch ~ that's moors meaning strong roots that are so well set into the ground a galleon could use them as moorings.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Ploughing more than once was a standard practice against grass in particular, and as likely to be one of the Bents as any.
Roots a bit bigger than couch ones was what was referred to as moors round here , like the ones you get creeping out from thorn or other stuff in the hedges. Jams up in the skims for a year or 2.

World leaders were are, round here with our field size and hedgerows


I would still rather that type of landscape than a prairie mind you , that sort of 'arable area' , blandness would surely bring on home sickness.

 

[MattR]

Now, the rest of the poem makes it sound like early summer

I'd never really thought of the poem as sounding like early summer, but yes there is the line about the "swallow twittering from the straw-built shed", on the other hand "for them no more the blazing hearth shall burn" sounds more wintry; are there any other summer references in it?

If just the swallow, it could be late in swallow season, after harvest maybe ploughing a cereal stubble?

 

[Bogweevil]

Why?

For horticultural crops where there is much hand work, celery say, horses were competitive with tractors for quite a while (if you don't count the poor carter who started before five and finished at eight getting the nags ready for work and ensuring they came to no harm afterwards).

 

[martian]

I'd never really thought of the poem as sounding like early summer, but yes there is the line about the "swallow twittering from the straw-built shed", on the other hand "for them no more the blazing hearth shall burn" sounds more wintry; are there any other summer references in it?

If just the swallow, it could be late in swallow season, after harvest maybe ploughing a cereal stubble?

You're right...it isn't clear. I've always assumed summer from the second verse:

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds

The swallow you referenced also made me think summer, but on re-reading it, by then he's off imagining the lives of all the rude forefathers of the hamlet in the graveyard and listing things that won't wake them up