Now dial. [Obscure altered form of SWATH1.]
1. = SWATH1 3.
1552. Huloet, Swarth of grasse nowe mowen.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. 72/2. The Swarth … are the rows of the cut Grass as the Sithe leaves it.
1706. Phil. Trans., XXV. 2237. The Waves came rolling down, like long Swarths of Grass, one upon another. Ibid. (1713), XXVIII. 91. When it is cut, it must in most Years lie 5 or 6 Days in swarth.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 277. I could have no prospect of mowing a good swarth in the French-grass.
1763. Museum Rust. (ed. 2), I. 236. In Buckinghamshire they cannot use a cradle, their crops being in general so heavy, that the workmen could not carry over the swarth.
1817–8. Cobbett, Resid. U.S. (1822), 181. They mow four acres of oats, wheat, rye, or barley in a day, and, with a cradle, lay it so smooth in the swarths, that it is tied up in sheaths with the greatest neatness and ease.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., xxiii. (1889), 221. There were groups of children in many parts of the field, and women to look after them, mostly sitting on the fresh swarth.
attrib. 1813. Vancouver, Agric. Devon, 171. The barley is gathered from the swarth into sheaves,… and, after the swarth-corn is secured, the fields are carefully raked.
b. To mow in swarth: see quots.
1763. Museum Rust. (ed. 2), I. 235. Horse-beans … they usually mow with a bare scythe, in swarth, as they term it; that is, they mow the beans towards the beans. Ibid. (1764), III. lxxvi. 336. As to mowing wheat in swarth, I think it will litter about very much, for beans do so.
c. Applied to growing grain: cf. SWATH1 3 b.
1880. Sir J. B. Phear, Aryan Village, i. 4. These open spaces … are … covered … by green waving swarths of rice.
2. transf. and fig. = SWATH1 4 a, b.
† At full swarth: (app.) ‘in full swing’ (Davies), like a scythe making swaths.
1601. Shaks., Twel. N., II. iii. 162. An affection’d Asse, that cons State without booke, and vtters it by great swarths.
1713. Gentl. Instructed, III. iii. (ed. 5), 403. Tho’ his Design miscarried, his Malice was at full swarth.
1847. Le Fanu, T. O’Brien, 267. Old time sweeps in his swarth.
1854. J. S. C. Abbott, Napoleon (1855), II. ix. 139. He sees the course of his heroes by the black swarth of dead men.
