About the rotten feet on the sheep, which animal I by nature despise, on
account of its cowardice and a tremendous silliness, the one running
after the other, but if a man _will_ plague himself with farming who has
been a sailor from his mother's apron-string, he must keep these beasts
and others like his neighbours, although he understands nothing, or very
little, about the whole tribe. So I have upon my small patch of ground
two good ewes, with little wit, but wool, and I sent them long before
Yule to a ram at Börevig, one of the fine kind from Scotland, as folk
bothered me that I must do it, because of the breed and the wool and
many things, but not a rotten foot did I hear of until after much
jangling among folk and a great to-do among the learned and such like,
which is nothing new to me in that kind of folk, who always and always
stand behind each other's backs, crying with a loud cry, 'It was not my
fault,' but, faith, it was. So I say to myself, 'What shall I do with
these rotten feet from Scotland, if I get the disease ingrafted, and
likewise upon the innocent offspring,' who are already toddling about
all three, because there were two in the one ewe. But foreign sickness
is not a thing to be afflicted with, at a time when we have scab among
our sheep and much else, and more than I know of, and thus I turned my
look again and again to that Government, to see if it will ever gather
sense. But yet the Government had not so very rotten feet in that other
important matter of a Sheriff, whom we got with unexpected smartness and
promptness, much to our gain and the reverse, when we think of what the
man now is, but there must be a skipper all the same. And now it is
growing light all over the world; that is, in our hemisphere, for spring
has come upon us with extraordinary quickness, and the ice, it went with
Peder-Varmestol, [Footnote: February 22nd.] and the lapwing, she came
one morning with her back shining as if she had been polished out of
bronze, with her crest erect, and throwing herself about in the air like
a dolphin in the sea, with her head down and her tail up, crying and
screaming. But the lark is really the silliest creature, to sing on
without ceasing the livelong day, and the sea-pie has come, and stands
bobbing upon the same stone as last year, and the wild-goose and the
water-wagtail. So we are all cheered up again, all the men of Jæderen,
and the cod bites, too, for those who have time, but folk are mostly
carting sea-weed, and ploughing and sowing, not without grumbling in
some places, but the work must be done.
Yours very truly,
L.B. SEEHUS.
KRYDSVIG, July 1, 1889.