“Till James’s Day be past and gone,
     You might grow hops or you might grow none.”

St. James’s Day is July 25, and so uncertain was the crop in the days before insecticides were in use, that the saying fairly represents the specially speculative nature of the crop in former times.  As an instance of the effects of varying years I had the uncommon experience of picking two crops in twelve months:  the first in a very late season when the picking did not commence till after Worcester hop-fair day, September 19th, and the second the following year when picking was unusually early, and was completed before the fair day.  At Farnham, where many of the tradespeople indulged in a little annual flutter as small hop growers, in addition to a more regular source of income from their respective trades, it was said that the first question on meeting each other was not, “How are you?” but “How are they?”

Hop-picking is always somewhat reminiscent of the Saturnalia; with hundreds of strangers from distant villages and a few gipsies and tramps, it is not possible to enforce strict discipline, for it is very necessary to keep the people in good-humour.  On the final day of the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular individual into a crib among the hops.  Shrieks of laughter greet the disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except a struggling leg protruding from the crib.

The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious blaze.  As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made year after year—­“fire is a good servant, but a bad master.”  These fires seem a great waste of good fibrous matter, as in former times the bine was utilized for making coarse sacking and brown paper.  During the war I suggested to the National Salvage Council that, owing to the scarcity of both these articles, it might be worth while to attempt the resuscitation of the manufacture.  The suggestion was followed by experiments which produced quite a useful brown paper of which I received a sample, but the cost of treatment was unfortunately prohibitive from the commercial point of view.

Worcester hop fair is the start of the trade, and the market is held behind the Hop-Pole Hotel, where there are spacious stores and offices for the merchants.  When the crop is bountiful the stores are filled to overflowing, and the ancient Guildhall built in 1721 has to be requisitioned.  On either side of the doorway stand the statues of Carolus I. and Carolus II., who must have watched the entrance and the exit of innumerable pockets.  Worcester is distinguished as the Faithful City, for like the County it had small use for Cromwell and his Roundheads; and to this day, on the date of the restoration of Charles II.—­“the twenty-ninth of May, oak apple day”—­a spray of oak or an oak-apple is in some villages worn as a badge of loyalty, the penalty for non-observance being a stroke on the hands with a stinging-nettle.