“Shoulder my yoke”

Apparently in former times, when we relied so heavily on healthy oxen to do our work for us, each yoke had to be tailor made for the animal lest it develop blisters. Thus when Jesus in today’s reading says “Shoulder my yoke” (Matthew 11:28-30), the burden he knows really will not so much be “easy” as in the modern English translation but be well fitted, as in the Greek, to our needs.