The sheep lay quietly, chewing their cud. Tuppenny fidgetted, “When
will Paddy Pig come back?” “_I_ don’t know,” said Jenny Ferret crossly,
“I’m only an old body. I’m wanting my tea.” “Ring the bell, Jenny
Ferret,” said Sandy. She clanged a little hand-bell up and down. The
lambs sprang away, startled; the sheep lay unconcerned. The sheep
talked to one another. “A bell? Sheep bells are sweeter! Ruth Twinter,
do you remember the Down ram, telling us about the Cotswold flocks? How
with each flock a two-three sheep go before, wearing bells? When they
lift their heads from nibbling and step forward, the bells ring—ting
ting ting—-tong tong tong—tinkle tinkle tinkle! Why has Mistress Heelis
never given us bells? She will do anything for us sheep?” “I know not,”
answered Ruth Twinter.
“I can tell you from the wisdom of age,” said the old Blue Ewe (sixteen
years gone by since first she nibbled the clover); “I can tell you.
It is because we Herdwicks range singly and free upon the mountain
side. We are not like the silly Southron sheep, that flock after a
bell-wether. The Cotswold sheep feed on smooth sloping pastures near
their shepherd.”
Said the peet ewe, Blindey, “Our northern winds would blow away the
sheep bells’ feeble tinkle. From the low grounds to us comes a sound
that carries further—Old John calling with a voice like a bell;
calling his sheep to hay across the frozen snow in winter.”
Up spoke a dark Lonscale ewe—“Each to their own! The green fields of
the south for them; the high fell tops for us who use to wander, and
find our way alone, through mist and trackless waste. We need no human
guide to set us on our way.” “No guide, nor star, nor compass, to set
us a bee-line to Eskdale!” said the bright-eyed Allonby ewe (her that
had knocked her teeth out when she tumbled down Scaw fell). “Two of you
Lonscales were runaways, in spite of old John’s hay.” “Who can langle
the clouds or the wind? If we want to come back—we will!”
“I wish our pig would do so,” said Pony William; “ring that bell again.”
The sheep resumed their conversation: “Where was it that they drove
you, Hannah Brighteyes?” asked the little ewe, Isabel. “Nay! I did
not stay to learn its place name; I came straight back to my heaf
on the fell! It was eight miles to Corkermouth market, and twelve
beyond.” “What short-wooled sheep could do that?” said Habbitrot, “it
takes strong hemp to langle us.” “We want no bells and collars,” said
Blindey, “they would get caught on rocks and snags.” “A sad death it
must be to die fast,” said Hill Top Queenie, plaintively; “I would not
like to be fast, like poor little Hoggie in the wood. He had eaten
sticks and moss as far as he could reach; but he had not sense to bite
through the cruel bramble that held him, twisted round his woolly ribs.”
“Grown sheep can get crag-fast,” said Belle Lingcropper, “I was fast in
Falcon Crag. I knew each yard of slippery screes; and the chimnies, or
rifts, that lead up to the high ledges. A summer drought had parched
the herb; only where water oozed from the rock face, it was green. I
went up and up, a hundred feet, always feeding upwards. Down below, the
tree tops quivered in the heat; and a raven circled slowly. Dizziness
is unknown to Herdwick sheep; I fed along a narrow ledge.”
“A rock gave way beneath my feet. It clattered down into the abyss. I
sprang across the gap, and went on feeding. The grass was longer; it
seemed as though no sheep had bitten it. Nor had we! Our turning spot
had been upon the stone that fell. I could not turn.”
“I lived thirty days upon the ledge; eating the grass to the bone;
parched by the sun and wind. Only a welcome thunder shower brought
moisture that I licked on the stones. I bleated. No one heard me,
except the raven. In the fourth week a shepherd and his dog saw me
from below. He shouted; I rose to my feet. He watched me for a time;
then he went away, and left me. Next day he came again and shouted. I
staggered along the ledge. Again he left me; fearing that I might leap
away from him to death, if he approached too near. On the last day,
three shepherds came and watched. I was too weak to rise; I dozed upon
the ledge. They climbed round the hillside; and they came sideways
above the crag. I could hear their voices faintly, talking overhead.
One came down on a rope; he swung inward onto the ledge, and tied
another rope to me—a woolly fleece and rattling bones! They drew me
up. Still I can feel the hot breeze, and smell the wild sage, as they
slung me past the face of the rock. I was carried to the farm, and
given warm milk. Within a week I was well.”
“A brave shepherd, truly: one who would go through fire and water and
air to save his sheep.”
“Our shepherds face rough times,” said White Fanny, “dost remember
hearing tell of the lad who parted from his fellow shepherd when the
early winter sunset was going down over the snow? The other one came
home at tea time; but he did not come. His folks turned out to seek for
him; some went along the tops; others searched below the crags. There
they saw marks of a rush; and his collie Bess watching by a snowdrift.
Just in time; just and so!” “Our men take risks with their eyes open:
they know that they cannot live underneath snow like us.”
Then Ruth Twinter spoke up cleverly: “I and three sisters were buried
twenty-three days beside the Dale Head wall.” “Nought to brag on!” said
the Lonscale ewe scornfully; “could you not feel it coming? or were the
gates shut?”
“Nay, they stood open. The wind went round suddenly, after a plash of
rain. A fall came out of the east. Then it turned to frost.” “I doubt
you _were_ a twinter, or a two-shear at most!” said the Blue Ewe; “the
low east brings the heaviest falls.”
“Indeed, and indeed we were hurrying,” said Ruth Twinter; “we came
down the fell, strung out in single file. I mind me we met a fox at
Blue Ghyll, going up. Then we met a blizzard that blew us into the
wall. A blinding yellow storm of dithering powdery flakes. Belle
Lingcropper’s mother went over a bank into the beck; she was dashed
against the stones and drowned. The rest of us cowered by the wall. We
were quickly snowed over. It drifted level with the cams. We stirred
ourselves under the drift, like the mowdie-warps and field voles. Our
breath melted the snow somewhat; it caked over our heads, a blue green
frozen vault. We ate all the bent-grass that we could reach; all the
grey moss on the wall. The dogs found us at last: dogs scratching, and
shepherds prodding the drift with the long handles of their crooks.”
“You would feel it colder when you came out?” “Yes,” said Ruth Twinter,
“it was warm and stuffy under the snow. Although we came out into
spring sunshine, the air outside felt colder than it did inside the
great white drift that lay on the grass along the Dale Head wall. We
came out quite lish and cheerful. Two of us never heard the cuckoo
again. Such things will happen,” said Ruth Twinter placidly, turning on
her shoulder and chewing her cud. Said old Blindey, “It is a sign of
snow, when the sheep come down to the gates. Sing us the rhyme, Hannah
Brighteyes:
“Oh who will come open this great heavy gate?
The hill-fox yapps loud, and the moon rises late!
There’s snow on the fell, and there’s hay at the farm—
Not that us elder ewes reckon much of hay; not unless we had learned to
eat it while we were hoggie-lambies.”
“You had cause to be grateful to the sheep-dogs, Ruth Twinter,” said
Sandy. “Yes, the dogs are our good friends. Sometimes over rough; but
faithful.”
“They get crag-fast too,” said Sandy. “They do. But they make such a
fine haloobaloo! that they are more quickly found. There was one that
made a bit of noise too loud. That happened in a blizzard. Poor dog,
its position was so bad that it could neither get down nor up; and it
could not be rescued with ropes. Its master tried in vain to get it
out. It cried on the shelf for several days, in sleet and biting wind;
cried so pitifully that the master said he would shoot it with his own
hand, before he would watch it die of cold. He went home for his gun.
When he was returning with the gun—he met Collie Allen in the road!”
“All dogs are not so lucky. Our Brill’s mother got cragged and killed
in Langdale.” “It is always the foremost best hound that goes over with
the fox,” said Sandy; “has Brill come back to the farm?” “Yes,” said
the sheep, “the hunting season is over; the pack is disbanded; the
hounds and terriers have gone back to the farms for the summer.” “If
all the terriers are as cross as Twig—they can stay away!” said Sandy,
shaking his ears. “Our collie Nip can tackle a fox; she has led the
hounds before now, for the first short burst up the quarry pastures.
She can run, can old Nip!”
“Foxes are hateful,” said Tibbie Woolstockit, stamping; “come here, you
lambs, come here! You are straying too far off.”
[Illustration]
“Do you remember, Ruth Twinter, when you and I were feeding above
Woundale; we looked over the edge into Broad How? Far down below us
we could see three little fox cubs, playing in the sun. Sometimes one
would grab another’s tail, like a kitten; then one would sit up and
scratch its ear—” (‘Full of fleas,’ remarked Sandy)—“then another would
roll over on its back, like a fat little puppy dog. The vixen was
curled up asleep on top of a big boulder stone. Presently one of our
shepherds appeared, a long way off, walking along the other side of
the valley. The vixen slipped quietly off the rock; stole away over
Thresthwaite Mouth into Hartsop, a mile away from the cubs. She seemed
to give no sound nor signal; but the little foxes vanished into the
borran.” “Very pretty. Charming! I wonder how many lambs’ tails and
legs there were in the larder?” said Hannah Brighteyes, sourly; “they
took over thirty, one spring: big lambs, too: old enough to be tailed
and marked. They had skinned a lamb with Mistress Heelis’ mark on its
jacket. And there was part of one of Jimmy’s ducks.”
“I love the high places,” said Belle Lingcropper; “I remember, when I
was a lamb, I and my brother twin were feeding on Pavey Ark with our
mother. We were feeding part way up.”
Two climbing men came up, behind us and below. I do not think they
knew that they were driving us before them. We climbed and climbed in
the chimney that had scarcely foot-hold for a goat. We reached a shelf
some four feet from the top. Our mother jumped out nimbly. My brother
followed her with difficulty. Time and again I jumped; only to fall
back upon that ledge above the precipice. Our mother bleated overhead.
She moved to a spot where the wall of rock was lower. I followed
sideways along the ledge; looking up at her and bleating. At the third
trial I jumped out. There was sweet grazing on the top.
Cool is the air above the craggy summit. Clear is the water of the
mountain keld. Green grows the grass in droughty days beneath the
brackens! What though the hailstorm sweep the fell in winter—through
tempest, frost, or heat—we live our patient day’s allotted span.
Wild and free as when the stone-men told our puzzled early numbers;
untamed as when the Norsemen named our grassings in their stride. Our
little feet had ridged the slopes before the passing Romans. On through
the fleeting centuries, when fresh blood came from Iceland, Spain, or
Scotland—stubborn, unchanged, UNBEATEN—we have held the stony waste.
Dunmail; Faulds; Blue Joe; Wastwater Will and Thistle; Rawlins; Sworla;
Wonder—old Pride of Helvellyn—pass the tough lineage forward; keeps
the tarrie woo’ unsoftened! Hold the proud ancient heritage of our
Herdwick sheep.
[Illustration]