Then, too, his
own crops might be eaten with impunity by doves from the noble dovecote
or trampled underfoot by a merry hunting-party from the manor-house.
The peasant himself ventured not to hunt: he was precluded even from
shooting the deer that devoured his garden. Certain other customs
prevailed in various localities, conceived originally no doubt in a
spirit of good-natured familiarity between noble and peasants, but now
grown irritating if none the less humorous. It is said, for instance,
that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the
wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were
obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family
from the dismal croaking of the frogs.
[Sidenote: Persistence of "Three-field System" of Agriculture]
In another important respect the manorial system survived long after
serfdom had begun to decline. This was the method of doing farm work. A
universal and insistent tradition had fixed agricultural method on the
medieval manor and tended to preserve it unaltered well into modern
times.
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