Hitherto we have generally considered the peasant in his relation to someone else. Let us try, in this chapter, to see him rather in himself and in his own home; to travel over the past centuries as Defoe takes us over the South Seas, and to visit this Robinson Crusoe in his hut with his man Friday and his dog. We have tried to sound his spiritual poverty; let us now estimate his material destitution.

We may start from Aelfric's Colloquy, written in 1005 by a monk of Canterbury as a text-book of conversational Latin for his pupils. In this little book, men of different occupations describe their daily manner of life, each in turn; the form is that of a dialogue between a master and his several pupils.