The gentle-eyed, long-horned oxen, which take the place of cart-horses, are another feature both of town and country life in Galicia. In northern Italy, in the month of November, I have often counted as many as fourteen and even fifteen pairs of oxen in front of one plough; that is a sight not met with in Galicia, where I have never seen two pairs of oxen pulling the same plough; but in Italy they have modern ploughs, whereas here the plough of Virgil’s day is still in use. It is the identical plough that we see sculptured on Etruscan tombs, and on the Celtiberic coins. The ancients used them also as weapons: Pausanius fought with a plough at Marathon. Hesiod mentions in his _Works and Days_ the ἀροτρον αὐτογυον, which was a stout piece bent like a hook, with beams and share beams all in one piece. When driving along the country roads of Galicia, we used to meet many a ploughman wending homeward his weary way and carrying his plough upon his shoulder, while his oxen walked on either side; and I have often seen a couple of stalwart women engaged in tilling a field, one holding the end of the long handle of the plough, and the other in front guiding the oxen. Why has the modern plough not been long since introduced into this corner of Spain?[218] Are the Gallegan peasants as inimical to improvements in the plough as our Lancashire weavers were to the spinning jenny? By no means: the answer is to be found in their ignorance and poverty. The carts used by the peasants are almost as archaic as the ploughs; their shape is that of a small boat, and their walnut wheels make a strange screaming sound as they turn on their walnut axles, which can be heard at a considerable distance. There is a special word to denote this sound in the Gallegan language (_v. chirriar_; _n. chirrio_). I examined the axles of several, and found them twice the thickness of a man’s wrist and as smooth as satin. This “singing” of the cartwheels is not allowed in the towns, so the peasants soap the axles when they come into the streets; but the louder their carts sing in the fields and on the country roads the better pleased are they, for they believe that the oxen like the sound and will not work well without it. They also find it convenient in narrow lanes where there is not room for two carts to pass each other, because it warns them in good time that they are approaching each other, and that one must halt or turn back. They say, too, that in olden days, when the mountains abounded in wolves and bears, the singing cartwheels frightened and kept them from attacking the oxen and their drivers. Not only the peasants, but everybody likes to hear the cartwheels in the quiet summer evenings; it is like the sound of the scythe in England, and its associations are much the same. Rosalia Castro speaks of it as one of the things she missed when she went to live in Castille: