By the 1830s seigneurs in Silesia were complaining that the peasants were sending their youngest son, often a child, to perform labour service, while in Austria they were paying dues late, sending stringy chickens, addled eggs and mouldy honey as tribute, working slowly and with reluctance, and in some areas keeping an especially old and decrepit horse for work on the seigneur’s demesne. In Poland and Russia, when a serf decided to take his time over a job, he said he was going to ‘work as you work on the demesne’.
