Ask The Fellows Who Cut The Hay

Download or read book Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber Non Fiction. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay is a vivid portrait of the rural past of Blaxhall, a remote Suffolk village, in the time before mechanization changed the entire nature of farming, the landscape and rural life for good. In the 1950s, George Ewart Evans sought out those who could recall the nineteenth-century customs, crafts, dialects, tools, smugglers' tales and rural beliefs which had endured from the time of Chaucer, and created this fascinating picture of a now vanished world.

Download or read book The Pattern Under the Plough written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following his two classics, Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay and The Horse in the Furrow, renowned oral historian George Ewart Evans continues his study of the vanishing customs, working habits and rich language of the farming communities of East Anglia with The Pattern Under the Plough (Faber, 1966). Although based on East Anglia, this book was and remains of wider interest, for - as the author pointed out at the time - similar changes were occurring in North America, and also happening with remarkable speed in Africa. In chronicling the old culture George Ewart Evans has taken its two chief aspects, the home and the farm. He describes the house with its fascinating constructional details, the magic invoked for its protection, the mystique of the hearth, the link of the bees with the people of the house, and some of their fears and pre-occupations. Among the chapters on the farm is one of Evans's most original pieces of research: the description of the secret horse societies. Beautifully illustrated by David Gentleman, this book is important not only for the material it reveals about the past but for the implications for present-day society. 'As real (and as valuable) as the evidence unearthed by the spadework of archaeology.' Observer

Download or read book The Horse in the Furrow written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Suffolk Punch - that sturdy, compact draft horse of noble ancestry - was, until mechanisation, the powerhouse of the East Anglian farming community. In The Horse in the Furrow (1960), renowned social historian George Ewart Evans explores this potent symbol of a bygone era, and the complex network - farmer, horseman, groom, smith, harness-maker and tailor - which surrounded it. Evans charts a fascinating course, demonstrating the connectedness of husbandry, custom and dialect, and arguing for an organic, inclusive study of these aspects of rural life. In particular, the section on folklore sheds light on some of the most obscure practices, with the Punch standing proudly at its centre. With beautiful illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe, The Horse in the Furrow is an engaging and subtle portrait of an animal at the heart of its community

Download or read book The Crooked Scythe written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Ewart Evans was one of the pioneers of oral history. This anthology is drawn from his writings about the memories of men and women of a past era -- farm labourers, shepherds, horsemen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, sailors, fishermen, miners, maltsters, domestic servants and many others. Ewart Evans gathered this unique testimony in rural East Anglia in the 1950s, just as mechanisation was taking over every aspect of life, preserving a wealth of human history and language in this fascinating and often moving anthology.

Download or read book The Leaping Hare written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber Non Fiction. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Leaping Hare is a classic of nature writing, considering the wild hare in nature, poetry, folklore, history and art. George Ewart Evans was a pioneer of oral history, and the book features testimony from all walks of countryside life, which sings from the pages. A lovely book that is both exploratory and rooted in a sense of the hare's mystery .

Download or read book Horse Power and Magic written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pioneering oral historian, George Ewart Evans, began to record the farming ways of East Anglia in the 1950s by listening to old men and women whose memories went back more than fifty or sixty years. Many were agricultural labourers, born before the turn of the century, who had worked on farms before the arrival of mechanisation. It was assumed at that time that horses would soon disappear from the farms, and that this was the last chance of recording the part they had played for centuries. It later became clear that this forecast was too pessimistic and in Horse Power and Magic (Faber, 1979) Ewart Evans describes in fascinating detail some important farms where horses continued to be beneficially used more than thirty years later. He discovered that the traditions of the older horsemen had not died out but had been passed on, in only slightly attenuated form, to a younger generation keen to farm with horses, proving that the day of the heavy horse was by no means over. He also describes vividly the ways of horse-tamers whose skills had a touch of 'magic' about them. 'Taking his works a whole, there is no doubt that George Ewart Evans will survive as a fascinating pioneer of the extra-academic recording of human history...he has found a dimension all his own. This is indeed the very stuff of history.' Sunday Times

Download or read book Spoken History written by George Ewart Evans and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Ewart Evans is the pre-eminent chronicler of the British countryside; marrying oral history with sympathetic commentary and analysis, over thirty years and in a series of books, he afforded a unique view of a receding world. Spoken History (1987) is a retrospective of his remarkable achievements. It describes his pioneering methods, as well as the broad cast of characters he has interviewed across the years in seeking out the story of the land. What shines brightly is his love of dialect and his respect for its rich expression - as noble a vehicle for historical truth as more conventional modes. He also argues the case for historians to cast their net more widely, to entertain different voices, different cultures, in a more meaningful survey than documents alone can provide. The book is testament to a dimming way of life, and to a visionary man who strove to capture our final glimpses of it.