s knowledge, in minute
details, it is impossible to give an idea. I am assured of its existence
because I have come across surviving examples of it, but I may not begin
to describe it. One may, however, imagine dimly what the cumulative
effect of it must have been on the peasant's outlook; how attached he
must have grown--I mean how closely linked--to his own countryside. He
did not merely "reside" in it; he was part of it, and it was part of
him. He fitted into it as one of its native denizens, like the hedgehogs
and the thrushes. All that happened to it mattered to him. He learnt to
look with reverence upon its main features, and would not willingly
interfere with their disposition. But I lose the best point in talking
of the individual peasant; these things should rather be said of the
tribe--the little group of folk--of which he was a member. As they, in
their successive generations, were the denizens of their little patch of
England--its human fauna--so it was with traditional feelings derived
from their continuance in the land that the individual peasant man or
woman looked at the fields and the woods.

Out of all these circumstances--the pride of skill in handicrafts, the
detailed understanding of the soil and its materials, the general effect
of the well-known landscape, and the faint sense of something venerable
in its associations--out of all this there proceeded an influence which
acted upon the village people as an unperceived guide to their conduct,
so that they observed the seasons proper for their varied pursuits
almost as if they were going through some ritual. Thus, for instance, in
this parish, when, on an auspicious evening of spring, a man and wife
went out far across the common to get rushes for the wife's hop-tying,
of course it was a consideration of thrift that sent them off; but an
idea of doing the right piece of country routine at the right time gave
value to the little expedition. The moment, the evening, became enriched
by suggestion of the seasons into which it fitted, and by memories of
years gone by. Similarly in managing the garden crops: to be too late,
to neglect the well-known signs which hinted at what should be done,
was more than bad economy; it was dereliction of peasant duty. And thus
the succession of recurring tasks, each one of which seemed to the
villager almost characteristic of his own people in their native home,
kept constantly alive a feeling that satisfied him and a usag