Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay

This was the first of George Ewart Evans's famous collections of oral history, a compilation of material he gathered from his neighbours in the small East Suffolk village of Blaxhall (near Snape). He recognised that the older generation of villagers around 1950 would be some of the last people who remembered the way agricultural work was done before farms started to be mechanised, and also saw that the advent of motor cars, radio and TV were breaking up the old oral lines of transmission of knowledge from generation to generation. He therefore records as much as he could of the memories of shepherds, horsemen, field-workers, craftsmen and domestic workers, and puts them together with material about traditions, pastimes, smugglers' show more tales, and other village activities, to give a broad overview of what life was like for villagers in that part of the country in the 18th and 19th centuries, tied together with his own editorial comments and supporting information from elsewhere. I was particularly interested by his emphasis on the dialect words he collected, many of them describing tools very specific to the working of the land in the region. show less

Even someone with little interest in the history of rural Britain will be drawn into this book, not least for the writer's pleasant "voice". Combining solid research, oral history, and a true love of the subject, the book makes plain the amount of sheer brutal hard work expected of the agricultural workers of the past, while still managing to leave you with a wistful sense that something of real value has been lost in the move to mechanized farming.

A look at the fading customs of horse powered agriculture and associated trades in rural England, mainly Suffolk. Much hard work, even for children, but more integrated community.

Written in 1956 about a rural world that was already becoming a memory. Evans caught the survivors of Victorian Blaxhall before they disappeared for ever with their testimony.

Superbly designed and printed edition of this classic of British rural culture.