ABSTRACT
In harvest time the work was physically hard: continuous effort and ‘many hands make light work’ was not an exhortation but a necessity, for it was never a case of making work light but of getting the work done at all. In a variously developed form and fitted with a cradle to facilitate sheaving the ‘corn’ scythe was to prove its worth in speeding up the cutting process at harvest time and held its own against the mechanical reaper until almost the close of the century. Its use in the wheat fields at the beginning of the century was exceptional though it was often used to cut barley and oats. In Oxfordshire, barley and oats were no longer mown and always carted loose, but ‘latterley’ all tied in sheaves; in some parts of the county ‘most of the crops’ were ‘fagged’ at various prices from 10s to 14s an acre.
