Living by the calendar

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   A year on the farm

   1. Open What to do on the farm each month and read the History tab. Tusser starts his year in September, because a new tenant took over a farm at Michaelmas.
   2. Pre-teach thresh, harrow, malting and ted from the key terms. Read the September and October points aloud.
   3. In pairs, students draw the source's farm-year wheel and place each point in its month. They color each point by kind of work: grain, animals, bees, garden or house.
   4. Students label who does each job when Tusser says: the maids (oct.3), the boy (feb.5), the gardener (jan.8), the wife (apr.19).
   5. Pairs say which months look busiest and why, remembering that the page gives only two to four points from each month.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Pepys's days

   1. Open A diary for every day of the year and read the last part of the History tab on Old Style dates: England ran ten days behind most of western Europe.
   2. Read the entries for Christmas 1666, the dinner party of January 1663 and the first mackerel of 1664 aloud.
   3. Groups sort the 24 entries into the four seasons by their modern dates and fill a chart with columns for food, weather, work and pleasures.
   4. Beside each entry, groups write Pepys's own Old Style date and check that the two are always ten days apart.
   5. Each group reports one way the season changes Pepys's life, and one thing about that season the selection does not show.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Advice and diary

   1. Discuss the connection question on A diary for every day of the year. Students choose one season and compare what Tusser and Pepys show about food, work or weather in it.
   2. Point out that both lived under the Old Style calendar, so Tusser's saints' days fell about ten days later in the season than the same dates do now. The encyclopedia article on the Gregorian reform and Old Style dates explains the change.
   3. Discuss the reliability question on What to do on the farm each month: his verses say what a farmer should do, not what happened on any one farm.
   4. 20 minutes: Students answer the big question with evidence: how the calendar shaped people's work and daily lives. They cite at least two points from Tusser and two entries from Pepys, and say what a book of advice shows that a diary cannot.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   What to do on the farm each month

   Tusser, 1557–1580. Moderate.

   Short rhyming lines in modernized Tudor English; the notes explain the farm words and the saints' days.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   Michaelmas

   the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, when a new tenant usually took over a farm

   flail

   a tool for threshing, made of a wooden handle with a shorter stick joined to its end so that it swings freely

   thresh

   to beat harvested grain so that the seeds come away from the stalks and husks

   harrow

   to drag a frame with teeth or spikes over plowed ground, breaking up the soil and covering the seed

   malting

   soaking barley in water, letting it begin to sprout, and then drying it in a kiln to make malt, for brewing ale and beer

   hop

   a climbing plant whose flowers are used in brewing beer, to give it a bitter flavor and help it keep

   ted

   to spread new-cut grass out to dry so that it becomes hay

   1. Comprehension Which jobs does Tusser give to particular people, such as maids, a boy, the wife or the gardener, and in which months?
   2. Analysis Several points say why a job or a choice matters, such as the uses of bracken, the timely buyer of firewood, the baker who curses coarse grain, and the farmer who sows in rain. Choose two. What do the reasons show about what a farm household needed and worried about?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Tusser wrote from his own farming in the eastern counties, and his verses say what a farmer should do, not what happened on any one farm. Later writers said he never prospered at farming, though his will shows he owned two small farms. How far can we use his points as evidence of how Tudor farms were actually run, and what else would you want to know?
   4. Connection Read A year in a sentence: entries from the Chronicle, which records bad years such as 1131, when a cattle plague left a village with no plow teams. Tusser gives each job its proper time. What does each kind of writing show about farm life, and what does each leave out?

   Activity Students draw a farm-year wheel of twelve months, starting with September as Tusser does, and place each of the 34 points in its month. They color each point by kind of work (grain, animals, bees, garden, or house) and label who does it when Tusser says. Keeping in mind that the page gives only two to four points from each month, groups then discuss which months look busiest, which kinds of work belong to which seasons, and why.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   A diary for every day of the year

   Pepys, 1660–1669. Moderate.

   Modernized seventeenth-century English with long sentences and many names; the notes identify the people and explain the old calendar dates.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   Old Style

   the Julian calendar, still used in England in Pepys’s time, which ran ten days behind the Gregorian calendar used in most of western Europe

   Exchequer

   the royal treasury, which collected the king’s revenues

   chine

   a piece of an animal’s backbone with the meat next to it, cut for cooking

   flageolet

   a small flute blown at one end, with finger holes, similar to a recorder

   ’Change

   short for the Exchange, a building in London where merchants met to do business

   periwig

   a wig of false hair worn by men

   nightgown

   in Pepys’s time, a loose gown worn indoors when not fully dressed, not a garment for sleeping in

   1. Comprehension In the entry for the dinner party in January 1663, what did Pepys’s wife do before daylight, and what dishes did the guests eat?
   2. Analysis Pepys notes the first mackerel he has seen this year, the first time this summer that he wore a half shirt, and snow he had not seen for three years. Why might he think things like these worth writing down? What do they show about how the seasons shaped his days?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Pepys kept his diary privately, in shorthand, and sometimes wrote it up from notes several days later. In one entry he reports what the parish clerk Hadley told him about the plague. Which parts of these entries did Pepys see for himself, and which did he hear from others? How should that change the way we use each part?
   4. Connection Read What to do on the farm each month, in which Tusser tells a farmer what to do each month. Choose one season and compare what each writer shows about food, work or weather. What can a book of advice tell us that a diary cannot, and the reverse?

   Activity Groups sort the 24 entries into the four seasons, using the modern dates shown on the page, and make a chart for each season with columns for food, weather, work and pleasures. Beside each entry they also write Pepys’s own Old Style date and check that the two are always ten days apart. Each group then reports one thing the diary shows the season changing in Pepys’s life, and one thing about that season the selection does not show.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: How did the calendar shape people's work and daily lives? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students set Tusser's advice beside Pepys's diary, sort entries by season, and check the ten-day gap between Old and New Style dates.

Go further

Other units

Naming the months · Fixing the year

Encyclopedia

Feast days and the farming year · The Gregorian reform and Old Style dates · The Julian calendar

Play

Knot Count

Collection

Every source in Keeping Time