Laudator Temporis Acti

Gerald Brenan (1894-1987), South from Granada (1957; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 55-56:

My village was almost self-supporting. The poorer families ate nothing that was not grown in the parish, except fresh fish (which was brought up on mule-back from the coast in a night's journey) and dried cod. Cotton materials, earthenware, ironmongery, and cheap trinkets reached us from the towns, but the villagers wove and dyed their own woollen fabrics, their blankets of cotton-rag, and their silk handkerchiefs and bedcovers. In other words, the economy of an Alpujarran village had scarcely changed since medieval times. And the instruments of husbandry were of an even greater antiquity. Our plough was closely modelled on the Roman plough, while a slightly different form with an upright handle, which was in use on the coast and through the greater part of Andalusia, was the same as that shown on Greek vases. No doubt this was the primitive plough of the whole Mediterranean region. Equally ancient was the threshing board or sled — both Amos and Isaiah allude to it — and as for our sickle, it was identical in form with those found in Bronze Age tombs near Almeria. Yet our system of agriculture must not be written off as backward. Towards 1930 a few petrol-driven winnowing machines were introduced and found useful, but so perfectly suited were the other implements to the local conditions that I doubt whether it would be possible to improve on them. Since at this time I was reading Virgil and working my way through the twelve volumes of Frazer's Golden Bough and the Old Testament, I got a special pleasure from these archaic survivals.