Lurid Agriculture

As part of this MLA paper I’m working on, I’m revisiting Rowland Vaughan’s treatise on water meadows, an early modern form of irrigation which he invented. This might not sound exciting, but listen to the language of one of the prefatory poems, written by John Davies. Thanks to Vaughan’s agricultural innovation, he

holds the Sperme of Herbage by a Spring)
Infuseth in the wombe of sterile Lands,
The Liquid seede that makes them Plenty bring.
…
For, as all Womens wombes do barren seeme,
That neuer had societie of Men;
So fertill Grounds we often barren deeme,
Whose Bowells, Water fills not now and then.¹

It’s not surprising to see the landscape gendered like this (there’s a long tradition of this going back to the classical period), but it’s rare to see the point made so explicitly. I’m still thinking about what to do with passages like this.

1. Rowland Vaughan and John Davies, Most Approued, and Long Experienced Water-Workes, London, 1610. ↩︎