Since the invention of the automated milking tube put pay to the milkmaid as a viable career, the number of ‘traditional’ farming roles that have gone for a Burton is considerable. In this treatise, I intend to highlight several of the more significant agricultural jobs that have become obsolete and explore their origins and function.
Cow-Botherer
Since medieval times, the consensus amongst the farming community has been that slightly tense cattle produce the better meat. This is demonstrated in the following extract from the Peterborough Chronicle (1154) recounting a fabled encounter between a Gloucestershire farmer and Henry I.
“The farmer did spak unto the Kinge, ‘to bother a cowe is to make firme and stringy meate fitte for the angels.’ And the Kinge did nodde.”
There were several strategies that the traditional cow-botherers would use to agitate the cow. These, famously, were listed in Martin of Grimsby’s 14th century tome ‘Bos Molesta’ (N.B. It is interesting to note that R&B artist and professional beard hinter, Craig David, misheard this being shouted at him by an irate academic when he got lost rambling through a dairy farm back in ’99 and thus music history was made). Martin of Grimsby’s book was treated as gospel by many farmers for centuries, leading to the ex-communication of hundreds of them by the Catholic Church who pointed out that Martin’s book only mentioned Christ once and that was in passing. However, the strategies Martin of Grimsby proposed are listed below with direct quotes from the book interspersed.
Firstly, keep getting its name wrong, but ever so slightly.
“And whenne Zara, not Sarah a bovine the botherer doth call, like unto beef straws its flesh is made.”
Humming a tune loud enough to be heard but not loud enough so that the cow can discern what tune it is will vex the beast.
“’And what madrigal is’t?’ quoth the cowe. ‘That wille bugge me until the morn, I’ll warrant.’”
Deliberately forgetting the punch-line of a joke that you spent ten minutes setting up, and then fobbing them off with something like ‘it was something to do with the bishop’s shoes, or the piano, something like that’.
“For the miste wille fille the eys of the cowe so thou mayst believe that steamed gas wille from the beast’s own ears emerge.”
Talk loudly about how much better Friesians are than your herd to neighbours. Deny wearing a hat when you are blatantly wearing a hat. Do the trick where you pretend there is a coin in the cow’s ear. Ask a cow to ‘holdeth but a minute’ whilst you start a different conversation with a farmer who just happens to be passing.
Sadly, with a change in palate of the nation and influences of Japanese culture with kobe beef, cattle are now no longer bothered by professionals in Britain, merely by drunken students, who lack the finesse.
Scarewolf
A village simpleton would be tied to a stick in the centre of a field. His role was to scare off wolves by endeavouring to sell them life insurance.
Legend has it that a Wilhelm Smith, Scarewolf to the Duke of Monmouth, managed to sell a ‘third party fire and theft’ contract to an alpha female. Much to the Duke’s annoyance, he had to pay out when the wolf was broken into by thieves.
Border Yokels
Before the industrial revolution there was a surfeit of people in the countryside. As a result, country folk would be employed to stand with an ear of corn in their mouths marking the borders of farms. Large landowners could employ upward of five hundred border yokels, and would mark their employees with a daub of paint to distinguish them from the border yokels of neighbours, and to see if they’d tupped.
The Great Yokel Brawl of 1642, as parodied a century later in Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals 2: Their Countryside Assignment’ (1777), took place in Wiltshire at the intersection of five farms when a strong gust buffeted the ear of corn from one of the yokel’s mouths. Legally, the border was no longer marked and was open to claims from other farmers. This ‘claim’ manifested itself in the age-old tradition of fisticuffs (OE fista – n. meaning ‘to grip’ + OF couffes – n. meaning ‘hair style’ – literally hair gripping), and was only solved when Charles I himself came down and banged a few heads together and strangled a Mr Reginald Buttersby, screaming “You’re out of order, sunshine!” Of course this incident is the origin of the children’s song ‘the hokey-cokey’ with the original lyrics being: ‘Oh, Charlie choked a yokel. Oh, Charlie choked a yokel. Oh, Charlie choked a yokel. Knees bent, arms raised, Charles! Charles! Charles!’ The anti-Royalist sentiment and subsequent victory of the Parliamentarian forces in the English Civil War a few years later led to the de-Charlesing of the song, and we are left with the nonsensical ‘coal’-based version we have nowadays.
Waspkeeper
This is a role that had its origins in the court of King Henry II. Henry was famed for his love of honey and amazed at the ability of bees to produce such a sweet nectar. And yet he was extremely perturbed by the apparent inactivity of the bee’s slender cousin. A vexation documented by the historian poet, Jordan Fantosme, and translated, somewhat clumsily, by TV’s Patsy Kensit:
‘“What are these bloody wasps doing?” Henry 2 shouted at them people what hung around in his castle and stuff. “We is determined that they do something to earn their bloody keep!” He was right browned off.’
He appointed one of his court, the hapless Simon of Ghent, Royal Waspman, and demanded that he keep ‘but five score waspnests for to produce succour for the royal breakfast’. Left with such an impossible task, Simon of Ghent set upon the ingenious idea of hiring a team of jam makers to supply him with jam, that he would then secretly besmear inside the wasp nests late at night at great personal risk, only to remove once again in the morning in the sight of His Majesty or one of His aides, ready to present at the King’s breakfast table.
News of the jam-producing wasps of course spread across the kingdom, and for nigh on four hundred years most counties had at least two dozen ‘waspkeepers’ registered officially in each census, futilely carrying out the entomological equivalent of alchemy.
Until his dying day, Henry II was convinced that wasps produced raspberry jam.
Plum Bishop
Until 1757, the role of Plum Bishop or ‘L’évêque des prunes’ (as the title was originally), was to cast demons out of plums in the Warwickshire area. The satanic possession of the local plums was what locals believed led to the development of the Warwickshire Drooper – a variety whose heavenly taste conversely convinced folks of its subterranean origins in the pits of Hell.
The first Plum Bishop was a Mr Howard Quince-Habit, given his title by Richard I more in pity for his unfortunate name than anything else. Quince-Habit developed the tradition of wafting to cool the satanic heat of the plums and blessing them by chanting the ‘Gloria’ at them until they wept. The weeping plums of Quince-Habit were listed as one of the “Holiest Fruits in Christendom” by Pope Celestine III in his 1195 Papal Decree ‘Fructus Sancti’, along with a pear in Leipzig that had healed a pig, and a bunch of grapes that had grown into a shape resembling the pancreas of St. James the Lesser.
Miscellaneous Roles
Other agricultural roles that have since disappeared from the lush green fields of Albion include: the Briber of the Goose; the Village Clement – where a man was paid to be called ‘Clement’ during each harvest; the Chicken Nark who would grass on the chickens; the Womack; the Suggester of the Turnip; and Plough-Fluffer.
Treatises of Gloria 