menu_book Chapter 24

CHAPTER XXIV. LIVING IN THE PAST. EVENING TALKS ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEP-FOLLS, MAKING HURDLES, DEVIL'S GUTTS, CHARACTER IN SHEEP-DOGS, SALLY THE SPITEFUL DOG, DIKE THE LOST DOG WHO RETURNED, STRANGE RECOVERY OF A LOST DOG, BADGER THE PLAYFUL DOG, BADGER SHEPHERDS THE FOLLS, A GHOST STORY, A SUNDAY EVENING

TALK, PARSONS AND MINISTERS, NOISY RELIGION, THE SHEPHERDS' LOVE OF HIS CALLING, MARK DICK AND THE GIDDY SHEEP. CONCLUSION. During our frequent evening talks, often continued till a late hour, it was borne in on Caleb Balcombe that his anecdotes of wild creatures interested me more than anything else he had

to tell. But in spite of this, or because he could not always bear it in mind, the conversation almost invariably drifted back to the old subject of sheep, of which he was never tired. Even in his sleep he does not forget them, his dreams, he says, are always about sheep. He is, with the flock, shifting the hurdles or following it out on the down.

A troubled dream, when he is ill or uneasy in his sleep, is invariably about some difficulty with the flock. It gets out of his control, and the dog cannot understand him, or refuses to obey when everything depends on his instant action. The subject was so much to him, so important above all others, that he would not spare

the listener even the minutest details of the shepherd's life and work. His hints on the construction of sheep-folds would have filled a volume, and if any farmer had purchased the book he would not have found the title a misleading one, and that he had been defrauded of his money. But with his singular fawn-like face and clear eyes on his listener it was impossible to

fall asleep, or even to let the attention wander. And incidentally, even in his direct discourse, there were little bright touches which one would not willingly have missed. About hurdles he explained that it was common for the downland shepherds to repair the broken and worn-out ones with the long woody stems of the bithywind from the hedges.

And when I asked what the plant was he described the wild clematis or traveller's joy. But those names he did not know. To him the plant had always been known as bithywind, or else devil's guts. It struck me that bithywind might have come by the transposition of two letters from withybend, as if one would say flutterby for butterfly, or flaggendry for dragonfly.

Withybend is one of the numerous vernacular names of the common convolvulus. Lilibend is another, but what would old Gerard, who invented the pretty name of traveller's for that ornament of the wayside hedges, have said to such a name as devil's guts? There was, said Caleb, an old farmer in the parish of Bishop who had a peculiar fondness for this plant, and if a shepherd pulled any of it out of one of his hedges, after leafing

time, he would be very much put out. He would shout at him, Just you leave my devil's guts alone, or I'll not keep you on the farm. And the shepherds, in revenge, gave him the unpleasant nickname of old devil's guts, by which he was known in that part of the country. As a rule, talk about sheep, or any subject connected with sheep, would suggest something

about sheep-dogs, individual dogs he had known or possessed, and who always had their own character and peculiarities, like human beings. They were good and bad and indifferent. A really bad dog was a rarity, but a fairly good dog might have some trick or vice or weakness.

There was Sally, for example, a stump-tailed bitch, as good a dog was sheep as he ever possessed. But you had to consider her feelings. She would keenly resent any injustice from her master. If he spoke too sharply to her, or rebuked her unnecessarily for going a little out of

her way just to smell at a rabbit burrow, she would nurse her anger until an opportunity came of inflicting a bite on some erring sheep. Punishing her would have made matters worse. The only way was to treat her as a reasonable being, and never to speak to her as a dog, a mere slave.

Dyke was another dog he remembered well. He belonged to old shepherd Matthew Tit, who was head shepherd at a farm near Warminster, adjacent to the one where Caleb worked. Old Matt and his wife lived alone in their cottage out of the village, all their children having long grown up and gone away to a distance from home, and being so lonely by their two

selves, they loved their dog just as others loved their relations. But Dyke deserved it, for he was a very good dog. One year Matt was sent by his master with lambs to Wayhill, the little village near Andover where a great sheep fair is held in October every year. It was distant over thirty miles, but Matt, though old, was a strong man still, and greatly

trusted by his master. From this journey he returned with a sad heart, for he had lost Dyke. He had disappeared one night while they were at Wayhill. Old Mrs. Tit cried for him as she would have cried for a lost son, and for many a long day they went about with heavy hearts.

Just a year had gone by when one night the old woman was roused from sleep by loud knocks on the window-pane of the living-room below. "'Matt! Matt!' she cried, shaking him vigorously. "'Wake up! Old Dyke has come back to us.'

"'What be you talking about?' growled the old shepherd. "'Lie down and go to sleep. You been dreaming.' "'Tain't no dream, tis Dyke, a note is not!' she cried, and getting up she

opened the window and put her head well out, and there, sure enough, was Dyke, standing up against the wall and gazing up at her and knocking with his paw against the window below. Then Matt jumped up, and going together downstairs they unbarred the door and embraced the dog with joy, and the rest of the night was spent in feeding and caressing him and asking him questions, which he could only answer by licking their hands and wagging his tail.

It was supposed that he had been stolen at the fair, probably by one of the wild little Wallace men called General Dealers, who go flying about the country in a trap drawn by a fast-drawning pony, that he had been thrown, muffled up into the cart, and carried many a mile away, and sold to some shepherd, and that he had lost his sense of direction. But after serving a stranger a full year he had been taken with sheep to Wail Fair once

more, and once there he knew where he was and had remembered the road leading to his old home in Master, and making his escape had travelled the thirty miles back to Warminster. The account of Dyke's return reminded me of an equally good story of the recovery of a lost dog, which I heard from a shepherd on the Avon. He had been lost over a year, when one day the shepherd, being out on the down with his flock, stood watching two drovers

travelling with the flock on the Turnpike Road below, nearly a mile away, and by and by hearing one of their dogs bark he knew at that distance that it was his dog. "'I haven't a doubt,' he said to himself, and if I know his bark he'll know my whistle. With that he thrust two fingers in his mouth and blew his shrillest and longest whistle, then waited the result. Presently he spied a dog, still at a great distance, coming swiftly

towards him. It was his own dog, mad with joy at finding his old master. Did ever two friends long sundered by unhappy chants recognize each other's voices at such a distance and so come together once more?' Whether the drovers had seen him desert them or not, they did not follow to recover him, nor did the shepherd go with them to find out how they had got possession of him. It

was enough that he had got his dog back. No doubt in this case the dog had recognized his old home when taken by it, but he was in another man's hands now, and the habits and discipline of a life made it impossible for him to desert until that old familiar and imperative call reached his ears and he could not disobey. Then to go on with Caleb's reminiscences there was Badger, owned by a farmer and worked for

some years by Caleb, the very best stump-tail he ever had to help him. This dog differed from others in his vivacious temper and ceaseless activity. When the sheep were feeding quietly and there was little or nothing to do for hours at a time, he would not lie down and go to sleep like any other sheep-dog, but would spend his vacant time amusing of his self on some smooth slope where he could roll over and over, then run back and roll over

and over again, playing by himself just like a child. Or he would chase a butterfly or scamper about over the down, hunting for large white flints, which he would bring one by one and deposit them at his master's feet, pretending they were something of value and greatly enjoying the game. This dog, Caleb said, would make him laugh every day with his games and capers.

When Badger got old his sight and hearing failed, yet when he was very nearly blind and so deaf he could not hear a word of command, even when it was shouted out quite close to him, he was still kept with the flock because he was so intelligent and willing. But he was too old, at last. It was time for him to be put out of the way. The farmer, however, who owned him, could not consent to have him shot, and so the wistful old dog was ordered

to keep it home at the farmhouse. Still he refused to be superannuated and not allowed to go to the flock he took to shepherding the fowls. In the morning he would drive them out to their run and keep them there in a flock, going round and round them by the hour, and furiously hunting back the poor hens that tried to steal off to lay their eggs in some secret place. This would not be allowed, and so poor old Badger, who would have been too

miserable if tied up, had to be shot after all. These were always his best stories, his recollections of sheep-dogs, for of all creatures sheep alone accepted he knew and loved them best. Yet for one whose life had been spent in that small isolated village and on the bare down about it, his range was pretty wide, and it even included one memory of a visitor from the other world. Let him tell it in his own

words. Many say they don't believe there be such things as ghosties. They never see them. And I don't say I believe or disbelieve what I hear tell. I warn't there to see. I only know what I see'd myself. But I don't say that it were a ghosty or that it wasn't one. I was coming home late one night from the sheep. It were close on eleven o'clock, at a very

quiet night with moonsheen that made it almost like day. Near the end of the village I come to the stepping-stones, as we call them, where there be a gate and the road, and just by the road the four big white stones for people going down from the village to the copse and the down on to the side to step over the water. In winter it was a stream there, but the water it dried in summer, and now it were summer time and there was no water. When I get there

I see two women, both on them tall, with black gowns on and big bonnets they used to wear, and they were standing face to face, so close that the tops of their bonnets were almost touching together. "'Who be these women out so late?' says I to myself. "'Why,' says I, they be Mrs. Dirk from up on the village, and Mrs. Gerge Dirk, the keeper's

wife down by the copse. Then I thought I knowed how it was. Mrs. Garge, she'd been to see Mrs. Dirk in the village, and Mrs. Dirk, she were coming out a little way with her, so far as the stepping-stones, and they were just having a last little talk before saying good night. But mine I heard no talking when I passed him, and I'd hardly got past him before I says, Why, what a fool be I! Mrs. Dirk, she'd be dead at twelve months, and

I would end the churchyard and see her buried myself. Whatever I be thinking of, that made me stop and turn round to look at it again. And there they was just as I'd seen them at first, Mrs. Dirk, who was dead at twelve months, and Mrs. Garge Dirk from the copse standing there with her bonnets almost touching together. And I couldn't hear nothing, no talking, they were so still as two posties. And then something came over me like a terrible coldness in the

blood and down my back, and I were afraid, and turning, I runned faster than I ever runned in my life, and never stopped, not till I got to the cottage. It was not a bad ghost story, but then such stories seldom are, when coming from those who have actually seen, or believe they have seen, an immaterial being. Their principal charm is in their infinite variety. You never find two real or true ghost stories quite

alike, and in this they differ from the weary inventions of the fictionist. But invariably the principal subject was sheep. I did always like sheep, said Caleb. Some did say to me that they couldn't abide shepherding because of the Sunday work. But I always said, Someone must do it, they must have food in winter and water in summer, and must be looked after, and it can't be worse for me to do

it. It was on a Sunday afternoon, and the distant sound of the church bells had set him talking on this subject. He told me how once, after a long interval, he went to the Sunday morning service in his native village, and the victor preached a sermon about true religion. Just going to church, he said, did not make men religious. Out there on the downs there were

shepherds who seldom saw the inside of a church, who were sober, righteous men, and walked with God every day of their lives. Caleb said that this seemed to touch his heart, because he knowed it was true. When I asked him if he would not change the church for the chapel—now he was ill, and his victor paid him no attention, while the minister came often to see and talk to him,

as I had witnessed—he shook his head, and said that he would never change. He then added, We always say that the chapel ministers are good men. Some say they be better than the Parsons. But all I've knowed, all them that have talked to me, have said bad things of and that's not true religion, say that the Bible teaches different. Caleb could not have had a very wide experience, and most of us know dissenting ministers who

were wholly free from the fault he pointed out. But in the purely rural districts, in the small villages where the small men are found, it is certainly common to hear unpleasant things said of the parish priest by his nonconformist rival. And should the Parson have some well-known fault or make a slip, the other is apt to chuckle over it with a very manifest and most unchristian delight.

The atmosphere on that Sunday afternoon was very still, and by and by through the open window floated a strain of music. It was from the brass band of the Salvationists who were marching through the next village, about two miles away. We listened, then Caleb remarked, Somehow I never cared to go with them, army people. Many say they've done a great good, and I don't disbelieve it, but there was too much what I call noise. If, sir, you can understand

what I mean. I once heard the great Dr. Parker speak the word imagination, or as he pronounced it, Imagination, with a volume of sound which filled a large building, and made the quality he named seem the biggest thing in the universe. That, in my experience, was his loftiest oratorical feat. But I think the old shepherd rose to a greater height when, after a long pause

during which he filled his lungs with air, he brought forth a tremendous word, dragging it out gratingly so as to illustrate the sense in the prolonged harsh sound. To show him that I understood what he meant very well, I explained the philosophy of the matter as follows. He was a shepherd of the Downs who had lived always in a quiet atmosphere, a noiseless world, and from lifelong custom had become a lover of quiet. The Salvation

Army was born in a very different world, in East London, the dusty, busy, crowded world of streets where men wake at dawn to sounds that are like the opening of Hell's Gates, and spend their long strenuous days and their lives in that atmosphere, peopled with innumerable harsh noises, until they too acquire the noisy habit, and come at last to think that if they have anything to say to their fellows, anything to sell or advise or recommend from the smallest

thing, from a mackerel or a cabbage or a penny worth of milk, to a newspaper or a book or a picture or religion, they must howl and yell it out at every passerby, and the human voice not being sufficiently powerful, they provide themselves with bells and gongs and cymbals and trumpets and drums to help them in attracting the attention of the public. He listened gravely to this outburst and said he didn't know exactly about that, but agreed

on the downs, and that he loved their quiet. I remember when I was young, a very old shepherd on the farm, and I was very fond of the young, a very old shepherd on the farm. He had been more than forty years there, and he was called Mark Dick. He told me that when he were a young man he was once putting the sheep in the fold, and there was one that was Giddy, a young ewe. She was always a turning

round and round and round, and when she got to the gate she wouldn't go in, but kept on a turning and a turning, until at last he got angry, and lifting his crook, gave her a crack on the head, and down she went, and he thought he'd killed her. But in a little while up she jumps and trotted straight into the fold, and from that time she were well. Next day he told his master, and his master said with a laugh, Well, now you know what

to do when you get a giddy sheep. Sometime after that, Mark Dick, he had another giddy one, and remembering what his master had said, he swung his stick and gave her a big crack on the skull, and down went the sheep, dead. He'd killed it this time, sure enough. When he tells of this one, his master said, You've cured one, and you've killed one. Now don't you try to cure no more, he says. Well, sometime after that I had a giddy one on my flock.

I'd been thinking of what Mark Dick had told me, so I caught the ewe to see if I could find out anything. I were always a terrible one for examining sheep when they were ill. I found this one had a swelling at the back of her head. It were like a soft ball, bigger than a walnut, so I took my knife and opened it and out ran a lot of water, quite clear, and when I let her go she ran quite straight and got well. After that I did cure other

giddy sheep with my life, but I found out there was some I couldn't cure. They had no swelling and was giddy because they'd got a maggot in the brain, or some other trouble I couldn't find out. Caleb could not have finished even this quiet Sunday afternoon conversation in the course of which we had risen to lofty matters, without a return to his old favorite subject of sheep

and his shepherding life on the Downs. He was long miles away from his beloved home now, lying on his back, a disabled man who would never again follow a flock on the hills, nor listen to the sounds he loved best to hear the multitudinous, tremulous bleatings of the sheep, the tinkling of numerous bells, and crisp ringing bark of his dog. But his heart was still there, and the images of past scenes were more vivid in him than they can

ever be in the minds of those who live in towns and read books. I can see it now, was a favorite expression of his when relating some incident in his past life. Whenever a sudden light, a kind of smile, came into his eyes, I knew that it was at some ancient memory, a touch of quaintness or humor in some farmer or shepherd he had known in the vanished time, his father perhaps, or old John, or Mark Dick, or Liddy,

or Daniel Burden, the solemn seeker after buried treasure. After our long Sunday talk we were silent for a time, and then he uttered those impressive words, I don't say that I want to have my life again, because to be sinful. We must take what is sent. But if it was offered to me, and I was told to choose my work, I'd say, Give me my

Wiltshire Downs again, and let me be a shepherd there all my life long. End of CHAPTER XXIV