Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men.

The 1st of August is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglected his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (_i.e._ old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man.

But last year (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September; yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St.Swithin's, July 15.
Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not succeed so well as the lazy one.

Once in seven years there came a sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it.

Such a harvest was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and the watering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as much mathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) as crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often again.