Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/499

 492

rising rays of a rich September sun are rapidly dispelling the thick white mist that partially obscures from view one of the loveliest scenes to be found in the lovely “garden of England.” Higher, still higher, soars the sun; thinner, still thinner, fades the mist, till, one by one, and row by row, the stately hop-poles, with their clinging, clustering burdens break from their dewy veil and stand revealed in all their rich autumnal glory in the full blaze of the morning light. North, east, south, and west, as far as eye can reach, they rise a perfect forest of smiling beauty, whose perfumed fruit scents the air with that delicious fragrance so peculiar to itself. The garden we have entered is one of the finest in Kent, and this bright morning witnesses the commencement of the hop-picking season, a period of the year which is looked upon by all the humbler portions of the neighbourhood as a time of holiday yet profitable occupation. As for the junior portion of the community, school is but a name to them during its continuance, and their toiling teachers can rest or employ themselves in anyway that pleases them till the last pole is pulled and the last hop picked. To the tramp of St. Giles it is “partridge shooting,” “yachting,” and “out of town,”—all in one, and long before the day arrives, on which the season fairly sets in, he slings his kettle, saucepan, shoes, baby, and any other trifling article of housekeeping upon his shoulders, and pipe in mouth, stick in hand, bids a joyous farewell to his dark, dirty rookery, with its pilfered meals and squalid misery, exchanging its moral and physical pestilential atmosphere for the clear air of heaven, and honest though hard labour from morn till night,—parting, in fact, from all his old associations (save policeman A 1, or D 2), who affectionately await his arrival at his destination, with the kindly intent of seeing that his exuberant spirits do not rise beyond the moderate bounds of “hollering,” shouting songs, and swearing.

It is now a little past six o’clock, and all engaged on the ground are falling into their proper places, and, taking up our position on a small rising ground that overlooks the scene, we observe its activity, without interfering with those who have more profitable occupation for eye and hand than scribbling for daily bread!

The hops are planted—if we may so describe it—in equilateral triangles, so that, which ever way we look, they rise in even rows about six feet apart, with plenty of space for light and air to penetrate between each line. One division has already been felled to make room for the pickers’ bins which are ranged side by side, and row by row, down the cleared portion of the ground, the cottagers and homestead people standing in one line, the tramps in another, for even in hop-picking class prejudices have to be respected, and the bright-eyed, rosy-faced, neatly-clad peasant-girl, holds herself as much aloof from her ragged noisy sister as the proud daughter of wealth and fashion, from the poorer member of the class which does not possess the privilege of the entrée to her favoured circle. But there is great excuse for the country-folks’ circumspection, as a rough giantess of a woman, loud-voiced, evil-tongued, with a pair of immense hands that can scratch and tear on the slightest provocation, quite as readily as employ themselves in useful labour, is not exactly the person to make a pleasant next-door neighbour, even for a few weeks.

A few words here as to technicalities may not be amiss. Pullers, the men who cut the line and pull the poles from the ground; pickers (who are almost entirely women and children) those who pluck the fruit from the plants; measurers (called in some districts) tally-men,—the persons who measure the contents of the bins as soon as they are filled, and are generally some responsible men belonging to the ground; hop-boys, little fellows who follow the pullers with baskets to gather the hops that may fall when the bine is cut; hop-dog, an instrument to wrench the pole from the earth when manual labour is not sufficient to effect it; tallies, small pieces of tin, one of which the picker receives for every bushel gathered; pockets, but another name for small sacks in which the crops are sent to market; the host, the house where the crop is dried; bins, wooden frame-works with sacking fastened all round, sufficiently loose to form a large bag to catch the fruit as it falls from the gatherers’ hands—a double bin has room for four people to stand at, a single only admits of two; the hair, a horsehair carpet on which the hops are placed to dry.

The heavy tramp of the pullers betokens that work has commenced in right good earnest, and soon every bin has a large pole resting across its handle, and swiftly and skilfully the women strip them of their scented burden, stopping every now and then to rub their hands together, for it is terribly cold work, picking hops, with a thick dew drenching both leaves and fruit.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, both pullers and pickers warm with their work, and songs, laughter and merry voices fill the air with not unpleasing sounds, although it must be admitted that, so far as the songs of the tramps are concerned, “distance lends enchantment to the sound;” for “the Ratcatcher’s Daughter,” “Villikins and his Dinah,” and all the very choice collections of modern songs of the same class that have of late years taken such prominent hold of the public taste, are elegant refining ballads, compared to the rude ditties of this untaught, uneducated, neglected class.

Somewhat tired of watching the monotonous fall of the hops into the receptacles prepared for them, we stroll away to a more distant part of the ground where pulling is in full operation. Here, sickles in hand, the rural lords of the creation reign paramount, ordering the little hop-boys hither and thither, in no very mild terms, as the children hover round the poles, and interfere with the free use of their cutting implements. A tall gaunt Irishman now seizes one of the finest poles, and dexterously brandishing his weapon, cuts the bine about nine inches from the ground, then, exerting his strength, he wrenches the pole from the ground, and in a few moments, it is borne upon his shoulders to the bins. One