The enclosure of the common fields of England by hedge or wall, whereby
the country has been changed from a land of open champaigns and large
vistas to one of parterres and cattle-pens, constitutes a revolution in
the social and economic life of the nation. Though extending over many
years and even centuries, this process of change reached its height in
the latter half of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, and
thus comes into line with the industrial revolution which was taking
place in urban England about the same time. To some, indeed, the
enclosure of the open fields may appear as the outward symbol of that
enwalling of the nation's economic freedom which transformed the artisan
from an independent craftsman to a wage-earner, and made of him a link
in the chain of our modern factory system. To those economists who
estimate the wealth of nations solely by a ledger-standard, the
enclosure of the common fields has seemed a wise procedure; but to those
who look deeper, a realisation has come that it did much to destroy the
communal life of the countryside. Be that as it may, it is beyond
question that to the ancient and honoured order of shepherds, from whose
ranks kings, seers and poets have sprung, it brought misfortune and even
ruin.
Among the shepherds of the eastern slopes of the Pennine Hills few were
better known in the early years of the nineteenth century than Peregrine
Ibbotson. A shepherd all his life, as his father and grandfather had
been before him, he nevertheless belonged to a family that had once
owned wide tracts of land in Yorkshire. But the Ibbotsons had fought on
the losing side in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the forfeiture of their
lands had reduced them to the rank of farmers or shepherds. But the
tradition of former greatness was jealously preserved in the family; it
lived on in the baptismal names which they gave to their children and
fostered in them a love of independence together with a spirit of
reserve which was not always appreciated by their neighbours. But the
spirit of the age was at work in them as in so many other families in
the dale villages. Peregrine's six sons had long since left him alone in
his steading on the moors: some had gone down to the manufacturing towns
of the West Riding and had prospered in trade; others had fought, and
more than one had fallen, in the Napoleonic wars. Peregrine, therefore,
although seventy-six years of age and a widower, had no one to share
roof and board with him in his shepherd's cottage a thousand feet above
the sea.
Below, in the dale, lay the villages with their clustered farmsteads and
their square-towered churches of Norman foundation. Round about his
steading, which was screened by sycamores from the westerly gales, lay
the mountain pastures, broken by terraces of limestone rock. Above,
where the limestone yields place to the millstone, were the high moors
and fells, where grouse, curlews and merlins nested among the heather,
and hardy, blue-faced sheep browsed on the mountain herbage.
It was Peregrine's duty to shepherd on these unenclosed moors the sheep
and lambs which belonged to the farmers in the dale below. Each farmer
was allowed by immemorial custom to pasture so many sheep on the moors
the number being determined by the acreage of his farm. During the
lambing season, in April and May, all the sheep were below in the crofts
behind the farmsteads, where the herbage was rich and the weakly ewes
could receive special attention; but by the twentieth of May the flocks
were ready for the mountain grass, and then it was that Peregrine's year
would properly begin. The farmers, with their dogs in attendance, would
drive their sheep and lambs up the steep, zigzagging path that led to
Peregrine's steading, and there the old shepherd would receive his
charges. Dressed in his white linen smock, his crook in his hand, and
his white beard lifted by the wind, he would take his place at the mouth
of the rocky defile below his house. At a distance he might easily have
been mistaken for a bishop standing at the altar of his cathedral church
and giving his benediction to the kneeling multitudes. There was dignity
in every movement and gesture, and the act of receiving the farmers'
flocks was invested by him with ritual solemnity. He gave to each farmer
in turn a formal greeting, and then proceeded to count the sheep and
lambs that the dogs had been trained to drive slowly past him in single
file. He knew every farmer's "stint" or allowance, and stern were his
words to the man who tried to exceed his proper number.
"Thou's gotten ower mony yowes to thy stint, Thomas Moon," he would say
to a farmer who was trying to get the better of his neighbours.
"Nay, Peregrine, I reckon I've nobbut eighty, and they're lile 'uns at
that."
"Eighty's thy stint, but thou's gotten eighty-twee; thou can tak heam
wi' thee twee o' yon three-yeer-owds, an' mind thou counts straight next
yeer."
Further argument was useless; Peregrine had the reputation of never
making a mistake in his reckoning, and, amid the jeers of his fellows,
Thomas Moon would drive his two rejected ewes with their lambs back to
his farm.
When all the sheep had been counted and driven into the pens which they
were to occupy for the night the shepherd would invite the farmers to
his house and entertain them with oatcakes, Wensleydale cheese and
home-brewed beer; meanwhile, the conversation turned upon the past
lambing season and the prospects for the next hay harvest. When the
farmers had taken their leave Peregrine would pay a visit to the pens to
see that all the sheep were properly marked and in a fit condition for a
moorland life. Next morning he opened the pens and took the ewes and
lambs on to the moors.
For the next ten months they were under his sole charge, except during
the short periods of time when they had to be brought down to the farms.
The first occasion was "clipping-time," at the end of June, before the
hay harvest began. Then, on the first of September, they returned to the
dale in order that the ram lambs might be taken from the flocks and sold
at the September fairs. Once again, before winter set in, the farmers
demanded their sheep of Peregrine in order to anoint them with a salve
of tar, butter and grease, which would keep out the wet. For the rest
the flocks remained with Peregrine on the moors, and it was his duty to
drive them from one part to another when change of herbage required it.
The moors seemed woven into the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he
belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He
knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted
its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among
the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he
started a brooding grouse and the young birds scattered themselves in
all directions, he could gather them all around him by imitating the
mother's call-note. The moor had for him few secrets and no terrors. He
could find his way through driving mist or snowstorm, knowing exactly
where the sheep would take shelter from the blast, and rescuing them
from the danger of falling over rocks or becoming buried in snowdrifts.
The sun by day and the stars by night were for him both clock and
compass, and if these failed him he directed his homeward course by
observing how the cotton-grass or withered sedge swayed in the wind.
Except when wrapped in snow, the high moors of the Pennine range present
for eight months of the year a harmony of sober colours, in which the
grey of the rocks, the bleached purple of the heather blossom and the
faded yellows and browns of bent and bracken overpower the patches of
green herbage. But twice in the course of the short summer the moors
burst into flower and array themselves with a bravery with which no
lowland meadow can compare. The first season of bloom is in early June,
when the chalices or the cloud-berry and the nodding plumes of the
cottongrass spring from an emerald carpet of bilberry and ling. These
two flowers are pure white, and the raiment of the moors is that of a
bride prepared to meet her bridegroom, the sun. By July the white has
passed, and the moors have assumed once more a sombre hue. But August
follows, and once again they burst into flower. No longer is their
vesture white and virginal; now they bloom as a matron and a queen,
gloriously arrayed in a seamless robe of purple heather.
Such were the surroundings amid which Peregrine Ibbotson had spent three
quarters of a century, and he asked for nothing better than that he
should end his days as a Yorkshire shepherd. But now a rumour arose that
there was a project on foot to enclose the moors. The meadows and
pastures in the valley below had been enclosed for more than
half-a-century, and this had been brought about without having recourse
to Act of Parliament. The fields had been enclosed by private
commission; the farmers had agreed to refer the matter to expert
arbitrators and their decisions had been accepted without much
grumbling. The dalesmen were proud of their freehold property and were
now casting their eyes upon the moorland pastures above. They agreed
that the sheep would crop the grass more closely if confined by walls
within a certain space, and the fees paid to the shepherd for his labour
would be saved; for each farmer would be able to look after his own
sheep. But what weighed with them most was the pride of individual
possession compared with which the privilege of sharing with their
neighbours in communal rights over the whole moor seemed of small
account. Moreover, stones for walling were plentiful, and the disbanding
of the armies after the French wars had made labour cheap.
At first Peregrine refused to believe the rumour; the moors, he argued
with himself, had always been commons and commons they must remain. Yet
the rumour persisted and gradually began to work like poison in his
mind. He was too proud to mention the matter to the farmers when they
came up for the autumn salving of the sheep, but a constraint in their
manner deepened his suspicions, and all through the winter a pall of
gloom enshrouded his mind like the pall of gloom on the moors
themselves. Spring brought dark foreboding to yet darker certainty. From
his mountain eyrie Peregrine could now see bands of men assembling in
the village below. They were wallers, attracted thither by the prospect
of definite work during the summer months, and on Easter Monday a start
was made. Peregrine watched them from the fells, and as he saw them
carrying the blocks of limestone in their hands they seemed to him like
an army of stinging ants which had been disturbed in their ant-hill and
were carrying their eggs to another spot.
Slowly but surely the work advanced. At first the walls took a beeline
track up the hillside, but when they reached the higher ground, where
scars of rock and patches of reedy swamp lay in their path, their
progress became serpentine. But whether straight or winding, the white
walls mounted ever upwards, and Peregrine knew that his doom was sealed.
The moors which Ibbotsons had shepherded for two hundred years would
soon pass out of his charge; the most ancient of callings, which
Peregrine loved as he loved life itself, would be his no more; his
mountain home, which had stood the shock of an age-long battle with the
storms, would pass into the hand of some dalesman's hind, and he would
be forced to descend to the valley and end his days in one or other of
the smoky towns where his remaining sons were living.
There was no human being to whom he could communicate his thoughts, yet
the pent-up anguish must find outlet somehow, lest the heart-strings
should snap beneath the strain. It was therefore to his sheepdog, Rover,
that he unburdened his mind, as the dog lay with its paws across his
knees in the heather, looking up to its master's face. "Snakes, Rover,
doesta see t' snakes," he would mutter, as his eye caught the
serpent-like advance of the walls. The dog seemed to catch his meaning,
and responded with a low growl of sympathy. "Aye, they're snakes," the
old man went on, "crawlin's up t' fell-side on their bellies an' lickin'
up t' dust. They've gotten their fangs into my heart, Rover, and seean
they'll be coilin' thersels about my body. I niver thowt to see t'
snakes clim' t' moors; they sud hae bided i' t' dale and left t' owd
shipperd to dee in peace."
When clipping-time came the walls had almost reached the level of the
shepherd's cottage. It was the farmers' custom to pay Peregrine a visit
at this time and receive at his hands the sheep that were to be driven
down to the valley to be clipped and earmarked. But this year not a
single one appeared. Shame held them back, and they sent their hinds
instead. These knew well what was passing in the shepherd s mind, but
they stood in too much awe of him to broach the subject; and he, on his
side, was too proud to confide his grievance to irresponsible farm
servants. But if nothing was said the dark circles round Peregrine's
eyes and the occasional trembling of his hand betrayed to the men his
sleepless nights and the palsied fear that infected his heart.
At times, too, though he did his utmost to avoid them, the shepherd
would come upon the bands of wallers engaged in their sinister task.
These were strangers to the dale and less reticent than the men from the
farms.
"Good-mornin', shipperd. Thou'll be noan sae pleased to set een on us
wallers, I reckon," one of them would say.
"Good-mornin'," Peregrine would reply. "I weant say that I's fain to see
you, but I've no call to threap wi' waller-lads. Ye can gan back to them
that sent you and axe 'em why they've nivver set foot on t' moor this
yeer."
"Mebbe they're thrang wi' their beasts and have no time to look after t'
yowes."
"Thrang wi' beasts, is it? Nay, they're thrang wi' t' devil, and are
flaid to look an honest man i' t' face."
The old man's words, and still more the lines of anguish that seamed his
weather-beaten face, touched them to the quick. But what could they do?
They were day-labourers, with wives and children dependent on the work
of their hands. Walling meant tenpence a day and regular work for at
least six months, and the choice lay between that and the dreaded
"Bastile," as Yorkshiremen in the years that succeeded the French
Revolution had learnt to call the workhouse.
So the work went on, and each day saw "the snakes" approaching nearer to
their goal on the crest of the fells. Peregrine still pursued his
calling, for the farmers, partly to humour the old man, gave orders that
a gap here and there should be left in the walls through which he could
drive his flocks. The work slackened somewhat during the hay harvest,
and the services of the wallers were enlisted in the meadows below. But
when the hay was gathered into the barns--there are no haystacks in the
Yorkshire dales--walling was resumed with greater vigour than before.
The summer was advancing, and the plan was to finish the work before the
winter storms called a halt. All hands were therefore summoned to the
task, and the farmers themselves would often join the bands of wallers.
Peregrine kept out of their way as far as possible, hating nothing so
much as the sound of their hammers dressing the stone. But one day, as
he rounded a rocky spur, he came upon the chief farmer of the district,
as he was having dinner with his men under the lee of the wall he was
building. Seeing that an encounter was unavoidable, the shepherd
advanced boldly to meet his adversary.
"I've catched thee at thy wark at last have I, Timothy?" were his words
of greeting, and Timothy Metcalfe cowered before a voice which seared
like one of his own branding-irons. "Enclosin' t' freemen's commons is
nobbut devil's wark, I's thinkin'," Peregrine went on relentlessly, "and
I've marked thee out for devil's wark sin first thou tried to bring more
nor thy stint o' Swawdill yowes on to t' moor."
The wallers received this home-thrust with a smile of approval, and
Timothy, roused by this, sought to defend himself.
"It's noan devil's wark," he retorted. "Enclosure was made by order o'
t' commissioners."
"Aye, I know all about t' commissioners--farmers hand i' glove wi' t'
lawyers frae t' towns, and, aboon all, a government that's i' t'
landlords' pockets. What I say is that t' common land belongs iverybody,
an' sike-like as thee have gotten no reight to fence it in."
"Happen we're doin' it for t' good o' t' country," argued Timothy.
"There's bin a vast o' good herbage wasted, wi' sheep hallockin' all
ower t' moors, croppin' a bit here and a bit theer, and lettin' t' best
part o' t' grass get spoilt."
"Thou's leein', and thou knows it," replied Peregrine, with the
righteous indignation of one whose professional honour is impugned.
"I've allus taen care that t' moors hae bin cropped fair; thou reckons
thou'll feed mair yowes an' lambs on t' moors when thou's bigged thy
walls; but thou weant, thou'll feed less. I know mair about sheep nor
thou does, and I tell thee thou'll not get thy twee hinds to tend 'em
same as a shepherd that's bred an' born on t' moors."
"We sal see about that," Metcalfe answered sullenly.
"An' what wilta do when t' winter storms coom?" Peregrine continued.
"It's not o' thee an' thine, but o' t' yowes I's thinkin'; they'll be
liggin theer for mebbe three week buried under t' snow. It's then
thou'll be wantin' t' owd shipperd back, aye, an' Rover too, that can
set a sheep when shoo's under six foot o' snow."
"Thou's despert proud of what thou knows about sheep an' dogs,
Peregrine, but there's mony a lad down i' t' dale that's thy marrow."
"Aye, I's proud o' what I've larnt misel through tendin' sheep on t'
Craven moors for mair nor sixty year; and thou's proud o' thy meadows
and pasturs down i' t' dale, aye, and o' thy beasts an' yowes and all
thy farm-gear; but it's t' pride that gans afore a fall. Think on my
words, Timothy Metcalfe, when I's liggin clay-cowd i' my grave. Thou's
tramplin' on t' owd shipperd an' robbin' him o' his callin'; and there's
fowks makkin' brass i' t' towns that'll seean be robbin' thee o' thy
lands. Thou's puttin' up walls all ower t' commons an' lettin' t' snakes
wind theirsels around my lile biggin; and there's fowks'll be puttin' up
bigger walls, that'll be like a halter round thy neck."
As he uttered these words, Peregrine drew himself up to his full height,
and his flashing eyes and animated gestures gave to what he said
something of the weight of a sibylline prophecy. Then, calling his dog
to heel, he moved slowly away.
By the end of August the walls had reached the top of the fells and
there had joined up with those which had mounted the other slope of the
moors from the next valley. And now began the final stage in the process
of enclosure--the building of the cross-walls and the division of the
whole area into irregular fields. This work started simultaneously in
the dale-bottoms and on the crests, so that Peregrine's cottage, which
was situated midway between the valley and the mountain-tops, would be
enclosed last of all. The agony which the shepherd endured, therefore,
during these weeks of early autumn was long-drawn-out. He still pursued
his calling, leading the sheep, when the hot sun had burnt the short
wiry grass of the hill-slopes, down to the boggy ground where runnels of
water furrowed their courses through the peat and kept the herbage
green. But go where he might, he could not escape from the sound of the
wallers' tools. It was a daily crucifixion of his proud spirit, and
every blow of the hammer on the stones was like a piercing of his flesh
by the crucifiers' nails.
October brought frost, followed by heavy rains, and the moors were
enshrouded in mist. But the farmers, eager that the enwalling should be
finished before the first snows came, allowed their men no respite. With
coarse sacking over their shoulders to ward off the worst of the rain,
they laboriously plied their task, but the songs and jests and laughter
which had accompanied their work in summer gave way to gloomy silence.
They rarely met Peregrine now, though they often saw him tending his
flocks in the distance, and noticed that his shoulders, which six months
before had been erect, were now drooping heavily forward and that he
walked with tottering steps. They reported this in the farm-houses where
they were lodging, and two of the farmers wives, who in happier days had
been on friendly terms with Peregrine, paid a visit to the old man's
cottage in order to try to induce him to come down to the dale for the
winter or go and stay with one of his sons in the towns. The shepherd
received them with formal courtesy, but would not listen to their
proposal.
"Nay," he said, "I'll bide on t' moors; t' moors are gooid enif to dee
on."
Early in November a party of wallers were disturbed at their work by the
persistent barking of a dog. Thinking that the animal was caught in a
snare, they followed the sound, with the intention of setting it free.
On reaching the spot they found it was Rover, standing over the
prostrate figure of the shepherd. The old man had fainted and was lying
in the heather. The wallers brought water in their hats and, dashing it
in his face restored him to consciousness. He was, however, too weak to
talk, so they carried him in their arms to his cottage and laid him on
his bed while one of them raced down the hill to summon the nearest
doctor.
A few hours later fever set in, and the patient became delirious. A
tumult of ideas was surging through his brain, and found vent in broken
speech, which struck awe to the wallers' hearts as they bent over his
bed.
"_Ein-tein-tethera-methera-pimp_; _awfus-dawfus-deefus-dumfus-dik_." The
old man was counting his sheep, using the ancient Gaelic numerals from
one to ten, which had been handed down from one shepherd to another from
time immemorial. And as he called out the numbers his hand fumbled among
the bed-clothes as though he were searching for the notches on his
shepherd's crook.
Then his mind wandered away to his three sons who had fallen in their
country's wars. "Miles! Christopher! Tristram!" he cried, and his glazed
eyes were fastened on the door as if he expected them to enter. Then,
dimly remembering the fate that had befallen them, he sank slowly back
on the pillow. "They're deead, all deead," he murmured; "an' their bones
are bleached lang sin. Miles deed at Corunna, Christopher at Waterloo,
and I--I deant know wheer Tristram deed. They sud hae lived--lived to
help me feight t' snakes." As he uttered the dreaded word his fingers
clutched his throat as though he felt the coils of the monsters round
his neck, and a piercing shriek escaped his lips.
After a time he grew quieter and his voice sank almost to a whisper. "He
makketh me to lie down i' green pasturs," he gently murmured, and, as he
uttered the familiar words, a smile lit up his face. "There'll be nea
snakes i' yon pasturs. I's thinkin'. ... He leadeth me beside t' still
watters.... I know all about t' still watters; they flows through t'
peat an' t' ling away on t' moor."
Later in the day the doctor came, but a glance showed him that recovery
was out of the question; and next morning, as the sun broke over the
eastern fells, Peregrine Ibbotson passed away. The snakes had done their
work; their deadly fangs had found the shepherd's heart.