Review: A 'true love' story, five stars because I loved it.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 1, 2012
This is a wonderful short story, every word counts and every sentence is crafted to tell the story of a father's love and acceptance of his abilities and his limitations. A few paragraphs reveals the family's past and future. It is brief, but it is complete. It takes place in a holiday setting, but it is a good read any time of the year.Short stories are hard to say much about without giving much away, so I will just add some quickly gathered info from various sites to give a potential reader some background to the life and times of Arthur and his family.Medieval farmers earned just enough to survive, this combined with the 12 hours per day an average farmer had to work, made for very difficult lives.Farms were never property of the peasants; they were property of the lord and he would exchange farming land for taxes he received in return. Farms were small and the peasants who worked the land did not own the land they worked on. This belonged to the lord of the manor. In this sense, peasants were simply tenants who worked a strip of land or maybe several strips. Hence why farming was called strip farming in Medieval times.Serfs were heavily taxed and were required to relinquish much of what they harvested. They did not even "belong to" themselves, according to medieval law.They had provide free labor, food and service whenever it was demanded. They had no rights. They were not allowed to leave the Manor and had to ask their Lord's permission before they could marry.The land which belonged to the lord was sometimes located all in one place and was called the close. On some manors the land was scattered in strips among the peasant's strips. One of the duties owed by peasants was to work a certain number of days on the lord's land and to give him the crops from it. They also had to pay fees to the lord out of their own property, for example, a percentage of their grain harvest or a number of chickens or young pigs. For every benefit the peasant had, he had obligations to the lord. Usually a third of the land was reserved for the lord's use and the peasant was required to work about three days a week on it. From the work on their own land, they were expected to share the crops with the lord as well. The lord would also share in fish caught on the manor. The lord benefited from his processing monopolies; some of the grain that was milled into flour, grapes crushed, beer brewed in his vats or bear baked in his ovens, became the property of the lord or a fee was paid for use of the equipment. A bailiff, appointed by the lord, supervised the peasants work on the manor. Peasants were expected to pay tithes equal to one tenth of their products to the church for its support. The lord often received a share of that according to his influence.As a final note I wish to add that this story may have had a special significance to me as I too gave the same gift to one of my three children.