The Worst Christmas Jobs 圣誕特輯 4

Hither, page, and stand by me, If thou know'st it, telling, yonder...)

By the ninth century, the Christian version of Christmas is spreading across Northern Europe. In the Czech Republic, a Christian Saint King Wenceslas goes down in history for his reputation for charity. When Good King Wenceslas looked out in the carol, the poor man who came in sight gathering winter fuel had a worst job. He was a fagoter. For hundreds of years, fagoters collected firewood to burn or sell for a few coppers. Fagots were a poor man’s log.

Archaeologists have excavated mediaeval fagots so we know how they were made. Bundling the twigs made them slower to burn. But tying them with freezing fingers is a painful business.

Very good.

My very first fagot. Can you help me get it on my back?

Yeah.

I know this, er, must look like there isn’t much to it, but actually once the Enclosures happened and the land everybody could go on was suddenly under private control. This became a very difficult job because either(you take that one...) (top) you had to take the risk of going on to somebody’s land and getting caught or else you bought it off. the landlord, in which case you paid over the odds for it.

You can do it. Yup!

OK.

Or else you got it on the black market and there are stories of people actually being sent to Australia to the penal colonies just for collecting fagots. So, you know, maybe in the early Middle Ages it wasn’t so bad but after a while it became something that’s very very scary to do. See you later, Albert.

Yup.

(In his master’s steps he trod, Where the snow lay dinted;

Heat was in the very sod )

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excavatev. To expose or uncover by or as if by digging: 挖掘, 用挖掘或類似挖掘的辦法揭開(kāi)或移去：

ex: excavate an archaeological site. 挖掘考古現(xiàn)場(chǎng)

Enclosure n. (英國(guó)歷史上的)圈地運(yùn)動(dòng)

buy off v.收買