it is! because _I am not free._"

Evidently the ploughman's want of freedom was his great hardship; his
work in ploughing, feeding, and watering his cattle, and in cleansing
their stable, was not harder than that of an ordinary carter in the
present day; but servitude galled his spirit, and made the work
intolerable. Let us hope that his lord was a kind-hearted man, and gave
him some cattle for his own, as well as some land to cultivate, and then
he would not feel the work so hard, or the winter so cold.

Frequently men were thus released from slavery; sometimes also freemen
sold themselves into slavery under the pressure of extreme want. A man
so reduced was required to lay aside his sword and lance, the symbols
of the free, and to take up the bill and the goad, the implements of
slavery, to fall on his knees and place his head, in token of submission,
under the hands of his master.

[Illustration: SMITHY
From the Cotton MS., B 4]

Each trade was represented in the village community. There were the
_faber_, or smith, and the carpenter, who repaired the ironwork and
woodwork of the ploughs and other agricultural implements, and in return
for their work had small holdings among the tenants free from ordinary
services. There was the _punder_, or pound-man, who looked after the
repair of the fences and impounded stray cattle; the _cementarius_, or
stonemason; the _custos apium_, or bee-keeper, an important person, as
much honey was needed to make the sweetened ale, or mead, which the
villagers and their chiefs loved to imbibe; and the steward, or
_prepositus_, who acted on behalf of the lord, looked after the