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Brother to the Ox
In 1933, influenced by the books of Charles Dickens and George Eliot borrowed from the public library, Fred Kitchen started writing about his experiences as a farm labourer. He was studying at the Workers Educational Association where his jottings became Brother to the Ox, this classic memoir of farming which does not romanticise the countryside. Fred's story begins in childhood, at West Riding, South Yorkshire, where he explored the woods and fields owned by the nobleman who employed his father for seventeen shillings a week. It was a place where the sun rose and set and little else disturbed the day's still waters. But his journey away from this idyll began abruptly on his thirteenth birthday, after his father died, when the young Fred started working as a 'day-lad' and then a horseman to support his family. His search for work through the fields, cowyards and colliers of Northern England is an honest and unforgettable account of life during the first half of the twentieth century, when locomotives first billowed coal smoke, while the First World War tore Europe apart, and as people left the land to work in the industrialised towns and cities.1908213310
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
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39 people want to read
About the author
Fred Kitchen
29 booksFred Kitchen was an English farm labourer, born at Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, in 1890, and in later years based in Derbyshire at Bolsover. He wrote for fun from being a youngster, but did not attempt anything for publication until he was 50 years old after attending WEA classes in Worksop. He wrote a number of excellent books about his farming experiences. The most popular of his books was the first, Brother To The Ox, which J. M. Dent's accepted despite the fact that it was handwritten (Fred couldn't afford a typewriter or to pay for the script being typed), and his other books included Life On The Land, Jesse and His Friends, Settlers in England, Songs of Sherwood, Foxendale Farm, Winter at Foxendale, The Ploughman Homeward Plods, and Goslington: Portrait of a Village. He never made any money from his books --"just a few coppers a week at the most," he once told me--but he said he wrote because he loved writing. I left school at 13, and had to work at farming and gardening all my life, but I have no regrets. When I was starting out and working as a cowhand, I earned about half-a-crown a week. The other lads used their money to buy ale, but I bought books, which were much more satisfying because you could drink in the words over and over again."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 6, 2023
My sweet husband (hi, Joseph!) surprised me with this book for my birthday last April, chosen because I love the topic of farming, and we share a love of Yorkshire. I stalled several times in the early chapters for almost a year -- until yesterday, when I challenged myself to get one book off my "currently reading" list before beginning a new one.
It's a shame I took so long to get into the book; it starts out a trifle slow but picks up around Chapter 4 and becomes a pure delight.
Fred Kitchen is at his best when describing his joy in nature and farm labor (often intertwined), discussing dialects and regional differences between south Yorkshire and surrounding districts, and writing about care of animals. He goes into great detail about the different farms where he is employed, his bosses and coworkers, and the duties he performs. I found it all quite fascinating, not just because I'm a sucker for details about farming, but also because of how faithfully he chronicles the customs and livelihoods of agrarian and village communities in the early 20th century.
It's not all about work, however: we also hear about the author's forays into literature (and later drama and opera), and some of the most vivid and moving parts of the book discuss his meeting and courtship of his first wife and, subsequently, their home life together. Fred Kitchen's persona is easy to love -- he is honest, sensible, wise, and good-humored with a gentle, self-deprecating wit.
I realized, as I neared the end of this book, that some of my favorite books I've read in the past year, and the one before, have been memoirs. So I can say that this was the book that caused me to become a memoir lover, or at least that made me aware of the situation. As it turned out, it's not just farming + Yorkshire that made this an ideal birthday gift, but farming + Yorkshire + memoir!
It's a shame I took so long to get into the book; it starts out a trifle slow but picks up around Chapter 4 and becomes a pure delight.
Fred Kitchen is at his best when describing his joy in nature and farm labor (often intertwined), discussing dialects and regional differences between south Yorkshire and surrounding districts, and writing about care of animals. He goes into great detail about the different farms where he is employed, his bosses and coworkers, and the duties he performs. I found it all quite fascinating, not just because I'm a sucker for details about farming, but also because of how faithfully he chronicles the customs and livelihoods of agrarian and village communities in the early 20th century.
It's not all about work, however: we also hear about the author's forays into literature (and later drama and opera), and some of the most vivid and moving parts of the book discuss his meeting and courtship of his first wife and, subsequently, their home life together. Fred Kitchen's persona is easy to love -- he is honest, sensible, wise, and good-humored with a gentle, self-deprecating wit.
I realized, as I neared the end of this book, that some of my favorite books I've read in the past year, and the one before, have been memoirs. So I can say that this was the book that caused me to become a memoir lover, or at least that made me aware of the situation. As it turned out, it's not just farming + Yorkshire that made this an ideal birthday gift, but farming + Yorkshire + memoir!
May 8, 2014
Kitchen was a farm labourer in the late 19th/early 20th century in South Yorkshire. If you're interested in tales of rural life in times past, this is the book for you. It was okay although the use of the vernacular was somewhat confusing at times.
May 17, 2016
Originally published in 1939, this memoir recounts the farming life in rural Yorkshire beginning in Edwardian England through pre-WWII, covering vanished livelihoods and forgotten vocabularies. Kitchen's memoir begins with his employment as a 13-year in 1903 to be a farmhand and addresses the rhythms of life in pre-WWI, the sociology of tenants and landowners and the separations of livelihood e.g. being a horseman, a cow man, milk man, pig man, charcoal men and numerous other stratifications. Of interest to those intrigued by fin-de-siecle life and rural England, this book is unlikely to hold the attention of those who require action or the unquiet life. This version part of the Little Toller imprint.
October 15, 2020
It's a fascinating account of rural life around South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire in the early 1900's. It seems a world away. Most heavy farm work was still done with horses, young lads were 'living in' and tied to a farmers household, and navvies were laying the first railroad to the village.
He speaks with authority and humility. He didn't consider his talents wasted as a farm labourer - it was the life he wanted. He writes competently and the pages fly by, but it peters out a bit towards the end. I preferred his later work 'Settlers in England'.
He speaks with authority and humility. He didn't consider his talents wasted as a farm labourer - it was the life he wanted. He writes competently and the pages fly by, but it peters out a bit towards the end. I preferred his later work 'Settlers in England'.
January 17, 2026
There are so many farming memoirs from the last century that a book in this genre has to be exceptionally good to stand out, but this one is top quality. Kitchen's account mostly covers his childhood through to his turning 30, with a couple of later chapters covering the next 20 years until publication.
Kitchen writes simply and directly, sharing both the happiness and the hardships of life on the land in the pre WW2 years, and accurately describing a way of life which has now vanished. He writes with a clear-eyed lack of sentiment, yet at the same time, a deep appreciation for the life he lived. He gets just the right balance between describing farm life in enough detail that you really understand what life was like then without sounding like a 'how to' farm manual. His descriptions of rural traditions and tasks, the natural world around him and the farm animals he cared for are a delight, and he is also excellent at giving character sketches of his various employers and co-workers.
He had a strong love for nature and also for learning, something that annoyed his father, who viewed such interests as 'daft'. The local chaplain encouraged his father to allow the young Fred to continue with his hobbies, saying "He will be a great man some day, let him study nature if that's his bent." Kitchen remarks "Both the chaplain and my dad were wrong, as far as I can see..." I would suggest that this book is evidence the chaplain was right!
Kitchen's enthusiasm for learning did lead to one of the most comical moments in the book though. A visiting preacher asked him about his reading and patronisingly told him "Very good, my boy, but you should read the classics!" Kitchen innocently tries to find 'The Classics' but "came to the conclusion that The Classics was a new book and had not yet appeared in the village library. Well, I managed very nicely without The Classics and in those two years read most of George Eliot's works, several Dickens, Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights."!!!
Further comedy is provided by Kitchen's awkward attempts at courting the young nursemaid from the Doctor's house. After meeting Helen in the lane, she drops some heavy hints as to where she goes cycling and when on her day off, but it's a good while after the conversation before he realises she was inviting him to join her!
When they marry "it seems that a whole eternity of happiness" lay before them, but Helen tragically dies a few years later, leaving Fred with two young children. He describes her death as leaving him "with all the meaning gone out of my world". Although he later remarries and builds a successful and varied career, the final three chapters lack both the quality and the joy of the rest of the book. The title of his book is taken from a poem which says "Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?", and it seems evident that he never fully recovered from the loss of his first love and that everything which came after was meaningless by contrast.
In spite of the poorer quality of the final pages, this is still an outstanding book in the farm memoir genre, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in rural history.
Kitchen writes simply and directly, sharing both the happiness and the hardships of life on the land in the pre WW2 years, and accurately describing a way of life which has now vanished. He writes with a clear-eyed lack of sentiment, yet at the same time, a deep appreciation for the life he lived. He gets just the right balance between describing farm life in enough detail that you really understand what life was like then without sounding like a 'how to' farm manual. His descriptions of rural traditions and tasks, the natural world around him and the farm animals he cared for are a delight, and he is also excellent at giving character sketches of his various employers and co-workers.
He had a strong love for nature and also for learning, something that annoyed his father, who viewed such interests as 'daft'. The local chaplain encouraged his father to allow the young Fred to continue with his hobbies, saying "He will be a great man some day, let him study nature if that's his bent." Kitchen remarks "Both the chaplain and my dad were wrong, as far as I can see..." I would suggest that this book is evidence the chaplain was right!
Kitchen's enthusiasm for learning did lead to one of the most comical moments in the book though. A visiting preacher asked him about his reading and patronisingly told him "Very good, my boy, but you should read the classics!" Kitchen innocently tries to find 'The Classics' but "came to the conclusion that The Classics was a new book and had not yet appeared in the village library. Well, I managed very nicely without The Classics and in those two years read most of George Eliot's works, several Dickens, Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights."!!!
Further comedy is provided by Kitchen's awkward attempts at courting the young nursemaid from the Doctor's house. After meeting Helen in the lane, she drops some heavy hints as to where she goes cycling and when on her day off, but it's a good while after the conversation before he realises she was inviting him to join her!
When they marry "it seems that a whole eternity of happiness" lay before them, but Helen tragically dies a few years later, leaving Fred with two young children. He describes her death as leaving him "with all the meaning gone out of my world". Although he later remarries and builds a successful and varied career, the final three chapters lack both the quality and the joy of the rest of the book. The title of his book is taken from a poem which says "Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?", and it seems evident that he never fully recovered from the loss of his first love and that everything which came after was meaningless by contrast.
In spite of the poorer quality of the final pages, this is still an outstanding book in the farm memoir genre, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in rural history.
December 24, 2022
3.5*
A lovely description of life on the land and among the farm animals. Fred Kitchen's memories are so vivid it was as if I could see them unfolding before my mind's eye.
"When the snow came we used to go sleighing down the mill field, which had a steep run of several hundred yards. It was jolly fun whizzing down to the bottom, and having to roll off into the snow because the track had frozen so hard we couldn't pull up without plunging into the stream. All the village turned out to sleigh, or to watch the thers go speeding down the slope, for the older folk, whose sleighing days were over, couldn't resist the pleasure of watching lads and lassies all in a mix-up, floudering in the deep snow at the bottom of the track. And didn't the girls enjoy it too, half a dozen lads and girls riding on a sleigh that was only meant to hold three, laughing ad squealing, while the stars twinkled over the fir-tree, and the mill dam crinkled and chinked as the frost gripped tighter and tighter on its over-flush."(pg.65)
"Before saying anything about my life at Moot Hall, I would like to say that being a shepherd's lad was about the roughest job on a farm during the winter months.There might be two or three hundred sheep folded on the turnips, and the shepher, his lad - and not forgetting the dog, spent their days from daylight to dark in the field feeding sheep and dressing turnips. Artists have drawn some pleasing pictures of the shepherd leading his flock on the grassy uplands, or gazing pensively at a setting sun, but we have n picture of a shepherd in the muddy turnip field; of him and his lad sliding about in the muddy sheep-pen with skeps of sliced turnips; or the lad bending down to clean out the troughs, recieving a gallant charge in the rear from a too-playful tup; or when snow and sleet swirls round their ears they 'chop and throw' in defiance of foul weather. That then is a picture of the shepherd as I saw him; and though he had a shepherd-hut in the picture, it coud only be used as a shelter during mealtimes." (pg.125)
"One amusing incident is perhaps worth telling about my thirst for knowledge. The missus would have a minister in to tea occasionally on Sundays...it was on an occasion when the minister was there that the conversation got around to good books, and I was pointed out as a lad that was 'fond o' reading'. Thereupon the minister examined me on the extent od my reading, which didn't seem to impress him greatly, for he said in a superior sort of way: 'Ah! Very good! Very good my boy, but you should read the classics!' Now, being a young innocent I didn't quite get him right, and asked the maid to see if the book was in the library. She, however was as great an innocent as I, and after searching the village library, came to the conclusion that "The Classics" was a new book and had not yet appeared in the village library.
Well, I managed very nicely without "The Classics", and in those two years read most of George Eliot's works, several of Dickens, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", and "Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights". I have found one thing in which a plough lad scores over all other working lads. What he reads he is bound to remember, for, unlike most lads, he has no distractions; and I, having enjoyed the company of Tom and Maggie Tulliver on the corn-bin, would have them as companions at the plough all next day. In this way I gathered a host of friends who accompanied me when ploughing, harrowing, or rolling corn..."(pg.151)
A lovely description of life on the land and among the farm animals. Fred Kitchen's memories are so vivid it was as if I could see them unfolding before my mind's eye.
"When the snow came we used to go sleighing down the mill field, which had a steep run of several hundred yards. It was jolly fun whizzing down to the bottom, and having to roll off into the snow because the track had frozen so hard we couldn't pull up without plunging into the stream. All the village turned out to sleigh, or to watch the thers go speeding down the slope, for the older folk, whose sleighing days were over, couldn't resist the pleasure of watching lads and lassies all in a mix-up, floudering in the deep snow at the bottom of the track. And didn't the girls enjoy it too, half a dozen lads and girls riding on a sleigh that was only meant to hold three, laughing ad squealing, while the stars twinkled over the fir-tree, and the mill dam crinkled and chinked as the frost gripped tighter and tighter on its over-flush."(pg.65)
"Before saying anything about my life at Moot Hall, I would like to say that being a shepherd's lad was about the roughest job on a farm during the winter months.There might be two or three hundred sheep folded on the turnips, and the shepher, his lad - and not forgetting the dog, spent their days from daylight to dark in the field feeding sheep and dressing turnips. Artists have drawn some pleasing pictures of the shepherd leading his flock on the grassy uplands, or gazing pensively at a setting sun, but we have n picture of a shepherd in the muddy turnip field; of him and his lad sliding about in the muddy sheep-pen with skeps of sliced turnips; or the lad bending down to clean out the troughs, recieving a gallant charge in the rear from a too-playful tup; or when snow and sleet swirls round their ears they 'chop and throw' in defiance of foul weather. That then is a picture of the shepherd as I saw him; and though he had a shepherd-hut in the picture, it coud only be used as a shelter during mealtimes." (pg.125)
"One amusing incident is perhaps worth telling about my thirst for knowledge. The missus would have a minister in to tea occasionally on Sundays...it was on an occasion when the minister was there that the conversation got around to good books, and I was pointed out as a lad that was 'fond o' reading'. Thereupon the minister examined me on the extent od my reading, which didn't seem to impress him greatly, for he said in a superior sort of way: 'Ah! Very good! Very good my boy, but you should read the classics!' Now, being a young innocent I didn't quite get him right, and asked the maid to see if the book was in the library. She, however was as great an innocent as I, and after searching the village library, came to the conclusion that "The Classics" was a new book and had not yet appeared in the village library.
Well, I managed very nicely without "The Classics", and in those two years read most of George Eliot's works, several of Dickens, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", and "Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights". I have found one thing in which a plough lad scores over all other working lads. What he reads he is bound to remember, for, unlike most lads, he has no distractions; and I, having enjoyed the company of Tom and Maggie Tulliver on the corn-bin, would have them as companions at the plough all next day. In this way I gathered a host of friends who accompanied me when ploughing, harrowing, or rolling corn..."(pg.151)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews