This spring, the Artletts have built their lambing-pens on the sunny
slope of Windle Hill in full view of the village. When, at
threshing-time last autumn, the waggons toiled up the steep hillside with
their shuddering loads of yellow straw, and the ricks were fashioned end
to end in a curving line against the north, strangers wondered why a
farmer should carry his bedding-down material so far from its main
centres of consumption, the stables and cowsheds. But the reason for the
work is clear enough at last. Behind the solid rampart of straw, the
lambing-pens lie in cosy shelter, and every day now sees them more
populous; day and night, as the month wends on, there arises from them a
fuller and fuller melody.
Alone, perhaps, of all other rural occupations, shepherding remains
unaffected by the avalanche of machinery and chemistry which has
descended upon agriculture. Here and there may be found a flockmaster
who talks of shearing-machines, but it is rare to find anything but the
old hand-clippers in use by the old-fashioned, wandering gangs of
shearers. Flocks are larger, and so bring the modern shepherd more
anxious care; but in all essential ways, his year’s round of work is the
same as in that time of old when the shepherds watched their flocks by
night near Bethlehem.
[Picture: ‘Springtime’]
For the first time, in near upon fifty years, old Artlett has had no hand
in the pen-making. Rheumatism, the life-long foe of the shepherd, has
got him by the heels at last; and, if it turn out with him as with nearly
all his kind, he will never again leave the chimney-corner, until he is
carried thence and laid to sleep beside his long line of forbears up in
the churchyard. But young George is as good a shepherd as any of his
line, in this, as in all other branches of the craft. Wherever you go
among the neighbouring sheep-farms, you will hear tell of the amazing
good luck of Windlecombe at lambing-time. George Artlett views the
matter from a different standpoint.
We sat together in his cosy hut on the hillside, towards twelve o’clock
of a gusty, moonlit night. The coke-fire burned in the little stove with
a steady brightness, casting its red rays through the open door, and far
out into the resounding night. Overhead a lantern swung gently to and
fro, rocking our shadows on the walls. From the lambing-pens hard by
there rose a ceaseless yammering chorus, and from the outer folds a
confusion of tongues deeper still, mingled with the tolling of
innumerable bells. George Artlett sat on the straw mattress in the
corner, his knees drawn up to his chin.
‘Ah! luck!’ said he, a little scornfully, peering at me through the cloud
of tobacco-smoke—all from my own pipe—which hovered between us. ‘An’ how
be it then, as them as believes in luck, gets so onaccountable little
on’t? Gregory, over at Redesdown yonder—’a wunt so much as throw a
hurdle on a Friday, an’ ’a wears a bag o’ charm-stuff round’s neck, an’
’a wud walk a mile sooner ’n goo unner a laadder—well, how be it wi’ un?
Lambs dyin’ every day, folks say; ah! an’ yows too—seven on ’em gone
a’ready! “’Twill be thirteen,” ’a sez, “thirteen, th’ on-lucky number,
an’ then ’twill stop. ’Tis Redesdown’s luck!” sez he; “ye can do nought
agen it!” An’ next year, ’a’ll goo on feedin’ short an’ poor, jest as ’a
allers doos; an’ putten th’ yows to th’ ram too young; an’ lambin’ i’ th’
hoameyard agen, where ’tis so soggy an’ onhealthy, jest because ’tis near
to ’s bed. When a man doos his night-shepherdin’, swearin’ at th’ laads
through ’s windy, ’a may well look fer bad luck!’
He rose, and drew on his great blanket-coat, and pulled his sou’wester
over his eyes. Then he took down the lantern from its hook, and together
we plunged out into the buffeting wind to make the round of the folds for
the sixth time since my advent, although the night was but half over.
The moon was nearly at the full. In its flood of pure white light, the
lambing-yard, with its surrounding folds, looked like some extensive
fortification, so high and impregnable seemed the walls that hemmed it in
on every side. These walls were made of sheaves of straw, standing on
end, shoulder to shoulder, of such girth and density that not a breath of
the unruly wind could penetrate them. Within, the lambing-yard was
floored a foot deep with the same straw, and on all sides were the pens,
little separate bays flanked and topped by hurdles covered in with the
like material. The whole place was crowded with ewes and lambs; the
newest arrivals still in the pens with their mothers, the rest almost as
snugly berthed out in the mainway of the yard. Outside this elaborate
stockade were two great folds, the one containing the ewes still to be
reckoned with, the other thronged with those whose troubles were happily
over, and with whom already the cares and joys of motherhood were verging
on the trite.
Shepherd Artlett took no chances at any stage of his work. At the
entrance to the lambing-yard, he carefully covered up the lantern with
his coat, and thereafter allowed its light to fall only where he need
direct his scrutiny.
‘Nane o’ Gregory’s luck fer me!’ he said. ‘There bean’t no wolves on th’
Hill nowadays, but sheep, they be jest as much afeared o’ summat as ’twur
born in ’em to dread. ’Tis in their blood, I reckons. Now look ye! A
naked light carried i’ th’ haand, an’ let sudden in upon ’em—see how it
sets th’ shadders dancin’ an’ prancin’ all around! Like as not, ’tis so
th’ wolves came leapin’ round th’ folds ages an’ ages back; an’ so it
bides in th’ blood wi’ all sheep—a sort o’ natur’s bygone memory.
Froughten wan yow, an’ ye be like to froughten all. Set ’em stampedin’,
an’ that means slipped lambs, turned milk, an’ trouble wi’out
end—Gregory’s luck agen!’
On these rounds, every pen in the yard was visited, and its denizens
critically examined: not a sheep of the huddled, vociferating crowd
through which we threaded our difficult course, but had her share in
George Artlett’s swift-roving glance. Here and there we came upon a
newborn lamb, and then George took its four legs in one handful and
carried it head downwards through the throng to the nearest vacant pen,
its frantic mother bleating her expostulation close in our rear. There
were the feeding-cages to fill with hay, and mangold to be carried in and
scattered amongst the crouching sheep. Sometimes there was a sickly lamb
or ewe to doctor, when we went trudging back to rifle the medicine-chest
in the hut; and rarely a weakling, who refused its natural food, must be
taken under George’s coat, a silent shivering woolly atom, and restored
to life and voice by the warmth of our fire and the bottle.
In how great a measure the luck of Windlecombe or any sheep-farm depends
on the foresight and tender care of the shepherd, was well brought home
to me as, in the first ghostly light of morning, something like a crisis
came to vary the monotonous round of our task. I had dozed off as I sat
in my corner, and woke to find grey dawn picking out the tops of the
hills, and George away on his unending business. Presently, through the
little window at my side, I saw him coming back over the rimy grass, his
coat bulged out with the usual burden. He set the lamb down on the straw
by the fire. Limp and lifeless it looked, and past all aid; but George
fell patiently to work swabbing it. As he worked, he talked.
‘’Tis White-Eye agen—a fine yow, but a onaccountable bad mother, ’a be,
surelye. Purty nigh lost her lamb laast season, an’ now agen ’tis
ne’ersome-matter wi’ un. Wunt gie suck. Butts th’ little un away, ’a
do. That, an’ th’ could, ’tis. Terr’ble hard put to ’t, I wur, laast
time, to save un! An’ this—well: if ’a cooms round, ’twill be a
miracle—’
He stopped to fetch his breath, then set to more vigorously than ever.
‘Lorsh! I do b’lieve! . . . Ay! I’ll do ’t!—better ’n a score o’ dead
uns, ’a be, a’ready. Now, shaap wi’ th’ bottle!’
But the wretched mute morsel of woolliness was too weak to suck. And
then George Artlett did what I had never seen done before.
‘Well, well!’ he said confidently, ‘we must try th’ ould-fangled way wi’
un!’ He took a gulp of the warm milk, and bringing the lamb’s mouth to
his own, tenderly fed it. Again and again this was done, until life
began to flicker up strong once more in the little creature’s body.
‘But mind ye!’ said George, as presently he stood looking down on the
resuscitated lamb, and regaling himself with its pitiful bleating, ‘No
more o’ White-Eye! Off to Findon Fair ’a goos wi’ th’ draught-sheep next
May, sure as she’s alive!’