‘The Lorn land’: A Winter’s Tale

Abstract

This article attempts to extract some sense of the genuine experience of peasant life in the north in the harsh winters of this climatic zone. What did the tillers of the land do in the frigid months from November to March? How did they cope with the inhospitable weather —blanketing snows, bitter cold, biting winds, and recurrent frosts that delayed the spring thaw, conditions that transformed the north country into a ‘lorn land’, a land lost, forsaken, wretched?