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'Heeld' or 'yeeld, again, is ploughman's language; when the newly sown corn does not 'heeld' or 'yeeld' it requires the harrow. In the next field, which the mowers had but just cut, the men were 'tedding' i.e. spreading the swathe with their prongs.
Eliot went down the road and through the gate into the hay-field. Colin and Anne were there. Anne at the top of the field drove the mower, mounted up on the shell-shaped iron seat, white against the blue sky. Colin at the bottom, slender and tall above the big revolving wheel, drove the rake. The tedding machine, driven by a farm hand, went between.
Allan Ramsay was residing at Loudon Castle with the then Earl, father to Earl John; and one forenoon, riding or walking out together, his lordship and Allan passed a sweet romantic spot on Irwine water, still called "Patie's Mill," where a bonnie lass was "tedding hay, bareheaded on the green."
These swathes we raked into cocks to keep them from the dew against our return at daybreak; and we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could, for in that shape they best keep off the dew, and it is easier also to spread them after the sun has risen. Then we raked up every straggling blade, till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding and the carrying of the hay next morning.
You see, the scientific men and historians, and students generally, will not be wanted till we are fairly in the midst of the tedding, which of course will not be till the day after to-morrow."
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