What is meant by pulling together may be explained by referring to the custom of the "Dunmow flitch," which was founded by Juga, a noble lady, in A.D. IIII, and restored by Robert de Fitzwalter, in 1244. It was that any person from any part of England going to Dunmow in Essex, and humbly kneeling on two stones at the church door, may claim a gammon of bacon if he can swear that for twelve months and a day he has never had a household brawl or wished himself unmarried. Hence the phrase "He may fetch a flitch of bacon from Dunmow," _i.e._, He is so amiable and good-tempered that he will never quarrel with his wife. To eat Dunmow bacon is to live in conjugal amity. There were only eight claimants admitted to eat the flitch between the years 1244-1772, a number that seems to justify Prior's sarcastic couplet: "Ah, madam, cease to be mistaken, Few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon." It is a great pity that "few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon," for those that do are so happy that they may be called birds of Paradise. "A well-matched couple carry a joyful life between them, as the two spies carried the cluster of Eshcol. They multiply their joys by sharing them, and lessen their troubles by dividing them: this is fine arithmetic. The waggon of care rolls lightly along as they pull together, and when it drags a little heavily, or there's a hitch anywhere, they love each other all the more, and so lighten the labour." When there is wisdom in the husband there is generally gentleness in the wife, and between them the old wedding wish is worked out: "One year of joy, another of comfort, and all the rest of content." When two persons without any spiritual affinity are bound together in irrevocable bondage, it is to their "unspeakable weariness and despair," and life becomes to them "a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." Such unions are marriages only in name. They are a mere housing together.