For Mr Kistle did then rise stiffly and took off his coat and gave it to me, saying, ‘Take this. I wish to embrace the Power of my Lord. To come into his presence as naked as the babe and as helpless and as innocent, washed of all my sins. For my soul is one with God and my seed blossoms.’
My children, he did take off his garments one by one and I was helpless to interject.
He it was, he alone it was who rended his garments from himself.
Not as the foulest whisper on the filthy wind hath dropped it amongst you, infecting with its calumnious poison.
Against thy healing minister.
Who was so near death or so I felt and not able to stand and my heart hard against him for I saw he was foolish and drunken, but not with wine, that I could not interpose myself betwixt his foolishness and his action.
Meaning our late curate.
And he did toss his garments to me, calling them after Isaiah but filthy rags of righteousnesses, and did thereupon halfway out of his worsted stockings fall heavily and nakedly upon the snow. And did not tremble.
My children, whither his soul went I cannot say, but his breath did not melt the snow at his mouth.
And on perceiving he was no more, I besought myself to seek succour, but on stumbling out for but a few moments I was so cruelly whipped by the storm that I returned, and laid myself at the mercy of our Lord, huddled in the lee of His compassion whose comfort is ever nigh e’en in the most fearful of times, and that did, thanks be to God, did come with dawn in the bodily guise of a shepherd and his dog, as ye well know.
And if I had indeed swaddled myself in the garments so venially cast to me, so foolishly cast off, who says I did evil?
Seeking life.
As the reasoning soul must.
Yet the ear of jealousy heareth all things, my children.
Though he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.
3. Improvements, 1712
I HAVE NEAR on sixty acres, most being white land. My great-grandfather enclosed it to sheep some hundred years ago but I till the greater part of it now, with no recourse to the Manor Court. Commoners are the harrow-rest to improved husbandry, is my opinion. I have hedged about my lower fields, and that land is a piece of beauty, in right order. To dung it, I have used all sorts. Pigeons’-dung I have found to be most advantageous on cold land, where the clay makes it spewy underfoot. A neighbour has sown his cold land with hay-dust straight after burning and ploughing. This, he says, kills the acid-juice most effectively, but I have yet to try it. I have for the rest of my land, being white and dry, applied the yield from my hogs-yard. I have found eight pigs to be sufficient for trampling of the garbage and weeds and Cornish muskings to make sixty or so loads of fine manure.
This last week it was recommended to me by my cousin, who husbands the other side of Ulverdon, towards Effley, that I apply on my white land human ordure, being the product of a suitably-placed house of office, not too near the dwelling — if I were to cast in also, every two days, straw, or suchlike, to clot it. Once broken down, it may be carried to a furthest field and heaped up for putrefaction. He has shown me a crop further advanced and fatter than mine which, he claims, is advantaged by said application of his own manure. I reckon this to be more owing to the said field being well sheltered from the easterly winds by a tall quick-thorn hedge all along one side. My own land is much unsheltered and I propose to enclose my upper fields from the violent winds of cold springs and the scorching winds we sometimes have when the corn is just fattening.
I have this day, being a nipping January, carried out to the fields my horse-piss and hogs’-piss, these being frozen and thus facilitating carriage, the motion of the cart being otherwise too great to enable the filling to the brim of the buckets. Piss, I have been told, is most beneficial to white land in wet seasons. It must, like other soils, sit for a suitable time, as the making of vinegar from beer, or else its properties will not be forthcoming, and possibly be injurious to the roots.
My wife, hitting her head on the door into the cow-stall, this room being dark and the day being so overcast it was almost resembling night, lay in her bed for the afternoon and complained of a headache. The maid cooked my dinner but let the fire out. I myself scoured the pots. I found the buttery to be in a filthy state, with much garbage and even a dead rat tucked into the corners. Today was mild for winter.
My spring-corn field is in good tillage. I rose early and walked it the length around as the church bell gave out the early service. It is my highest field and faces the village, which affords a view but is injurious to the crop as I am southerly to Ulverdon. I lost my hat when a gust blew, and chased it. It was very raw. I also met a vagrant dressed in nothing more than a shirt and a ragged pair of skin breeches, no doubt his father’s. He was holed up in the lee of the corner oak. I gave him a quarter of the bread I had taken up with me and the milk from my bottle, and sent him on his way. I pray that some of the gentlemen who berate our Chapel might try to live as this vagrant, more like Christ than they. This field had been of rye when I ploughed it with a narrow furrow before the first frost. I perceive that the winter has already shattered the furrows, these being narrow, and mellowed them out finely for the first harrowing. I received great pleasure from this observation of good practice.
It has been noted that women, if crossed, go pinched and silent, which is the healing-in of their womanly agitations, or they turn shrewish and bellow as if in labour. My wife does neither. She goes ill and lies abed. This causes much distress to our maid, who must redouble her efforts. We cannot afford to pay her more. Today she neglected to scour the pots when my wife had lain already three hours on her bed owing to our rupture at midday.
This concerned nothing more than the small matter of the dairy’s cleanliness. The first day of February was clear and the thatch smoked from the frost as if on fire.
Last night she hit me with the stick we keep for this purpose beside the bed. Flesh obeys not the cooling of the mind but pain only. We prayed together afterwards.
I have begun, being now February, to spread the dung on the field which I grassed last year. The two labourers who joined me in the summer were somewhat put out by this practice, being somewhat earlier than was the practice on their common, and it took some little time to explain to them that with this method the spring rains might wash the goodness of the dung down to the roots of the grass (which is St Foin) before it is dried to dust by the sun and blown off. They scratched their heads and maintained it was a queer thing. The smell of the hogs’-dung was lessened by the cold, I noticed.
This has been a dry February. I am hoping for rain in March, or my method will be put to question.
A waggon, left out of shelter in the small bennets lea for convenience, has split along the sideboards: Farmer Barr, passing by, informed me that it was the action of the night’s frost on the wet wood. I must shelter the waggon forthwith, although it is an old one, and loose in the hubs.
A storm last night has put out many of the greater trees and scattered the heaps of dung I took to the upper fields a week ago. A calf came out seeming well but died an hour or so later, whether to the effects of the storm I cannot conjecture. There is undoubtedly some kind of magnetic activity at work when the wind is very strong. The parlour is still full of smoke where it was blown down the chimney, having no opportunity of egress. The door was blown out in the still-room, and several pickle jars were lost — namely, the violets, the cowslips, the flowers of broom. My wife took this sight somewhat poorly.