One single glance backward over the names we have so far recorded in this chapter, and one thing will be obvious—their all but entirely Saxon character. Our agriculture terms, whether with regard to the work itself or the labourer, belong to the earlier tongue. There is nothing surprising in this. While in the nomenclature of trade we find the superior force and energy of the Norman temperament struggling with and oftentimes overcoming the more sober humour of the conquered race, in the country and all the pursuits of the country the latter was far ahead of its rival. It was better versed in agricultural pursuits, and ever retained them in its own hands. At the same time, as we well know, this very detention was but the mark of its defeat and the badge of its slavery. It was a victory where, nevertheless, all is lost. Wamba the jester, in ‘Ivanhoe,’ if I may be excused such a trite illustration, reminds us that our cattle, while in the field, and under the guardianship of the enslaved Saxon, were called by the Saxon terms of ‘ox,’ ‘sheep,’ and ‘calf,’ but served upon the tables of their lords became Norman ‘beef,’ ‘mutton,’ and ‘veal’—that is, while the former _fed them_, the latter it was that _fed on them_. Thus in the same way, if those homely pursuits which attached to the tilling of the soil, the breeding of cattle, the gathering in and the storing of the harvest—if these maintained the terms which belonged to them ere the Conquest, they are so many marks of serfdom. Provided the supply on his board was only profuse enough, the proud baron troubled himself little as to the supplier, or how or under what names it was procured. See how true this is from our nomenclature. There is a little word which has dropped from our lips which once played an important part in our vocabulary—I mean that of ‘herd’—not as applied to the flock, but the keeper. We still use it familiarly in compounds, such as _swineherd_ or _shepherd_, but that it once had a separate existence of its own is proved by the many ‘Heards,’ or ‘Herds,’ or ‘Hurds,’ that still abound surnominally in our midst; relics as they are of the ‘John le Hirdes,’ or ‘Alice la Herdes,’ or ‘Robert le Hyrdes,’ of our olden records. Chaucer so uses it. We now speak of our Lord as the ‘Good Shepherd.’ He, however, gives us the simpler form where St. Urban is made to say— ‘Almighty Lord, O Jesu Christ,’ quoth he, ‘Sower of chaste counsel, herd of us all.’ Thus again, in the ‘Townley Mysteries’ the angel who visited the shepherds as they kept their flocks by night is represented as arousing them by saying— Herkyn, hyrdes, awake!