SHEPHERDS
ONE of the most abidingly attractive of the late W. H. Hudson's books is his A Shepherd's Life. The simple stories in it seem to flower straight from the roots of the English countryside. It tells of men who were as the leaven of the English peasantry, single in heart and mind, and very wise in the lore of the earth. It tells, in Hudson's own delightful way, how old Caleb Bawcombe kept his flocks upon the Wiltshire Downs for fifty years, and how he loved his task so well that, when he came to die, he could say : " If I was offered my life over again, and was told to choose my work, I'd say, Give me my Wiltsheer Downs again and let me be a shepherd there all my life long." But shepherds like Caleb Bawcombe are hard to find to-day ; and to-morrow where shall we look for them ? Hudson has plucked the memory of one of them, safe from the ravages of time ; and now Mr. Walter Johnson has done the same, though in a far less complete way, for a dozen others.
Here are twelve chance encounters, then, with shepherds from every quarter of England. One's first fear is that a chance encounter is not likely to yield more than a very superficial crop of memories and shepherd-lore ; for all peasants are shy at first meetings, but none are so shy as shepherds ; and the cultured stranger must needs be either extremely ingenious or unusually tactful to wheedle a shepherd into confidences. The fear, however, was needless. Mr. Johnson has, in a delightful measure, the power to put his peasant audience at their ease. One's second fear was that the area covered was far too wide ; but, since the encounters range over some twenty years, and since Mr. Johnson has always been so careful an observer of Nature and her children, that fear proved needless, too. It is perhaps unfair, therefore, to term these essays chance encounters ; they are rather the isolated flowerings of a deeply observant life. And one cannot be too grateful for them.
Into each interview is woven a multitude of coloured facts. Here is a description of a Surrey shepherd's tiny wheeled hut, and the mere inventory of its contents is as sweet-sounding as a poem by John Clare. Here, again, is a dissertation on dew-ponds (that Southerners sometimes call air-ponds, and Surrey men mist-ponds), wherein local evidence is brought to prove that straw is, or was, sometimes used with the clay " to puddle them with," and to prove also that old ponds do sometimes go dry. Here are lively descriptions of primitive methods of sheep-dipping. And here, again, are various accounts of how, up and down the country, the ears of the sheep are pinched and clipped to differentiate the flocks. All the tiny circumstance of a shepherd's life and ways finds a place in this delightful book. Every unusual word that the shepherd lets drop is tracked and caught. Thtis we learn from an old Cotswold man- that- " the furst yur a ship is a lamb, the second a tegg, the third a theave, and tater that a ewe." In that same countryside wicket-gates are called " slap-gates," long narrow strips of land " slyngetts," fine bran meal " gurg,eons," and worthless lumber " rammel." Otherwhere gleaning •is called " leasing " ; sheaves are put into " aisles " (stooks) ; and the small pig that comes with every litter is known in Lincolnshire as a reelding, in Breeonshire as a crink, in Kent as a runt, in Essex as a cad, in Aberdeen as a Harry- pig,-and in the 'Isle of Wight as a dolly-peg. Such grains of lore are well worth the gleaning. And, similarly, is it not intriguing to hear that Dartmoor folk used to take their children to a sheepfold when they had the whooping-cough, and there roll them in the dew which collected where a sheep had lain ?
Let it not be suppo4ed, however, that Mr. Johnson's book is just stuff for the curious-minded. 'Every essay is intensely human, every sketch delightfully real. A personal preference may perhaps be allowed to single out that philosophical old shepherd of the South Downs. For all his knowledge of sheep he was a pure Cockney ; and he had a Cockney's joy in oratory and sly pessimism. " It's penal servitude, that's what it is, nothing else. Convicts are well-fed. They've good clothes : look at these ! Then look at the convicts ! They listens to the parson, Sundays, while I'm at works The only-difference is that I've got my freedom, and they ain't, but that's not much." For all that, his last words would most surely echo in sentiment those of old Caleb Bawcombe : " Give me my Wiltsheer Downs again and let me be a shepherd there all my life long." For shepherding, as these old men knew it, was as vital an occupation as life could offer. To-day it is,' at best, a half-and-half affair. " Shepherdin's a thing that wants apprenticin' to," said the shepherd of Selborne, " but in these days they wants a boy to do a bit o' this and a bit o' thaat, and fill in his time shepherdin', and there's no chance for a real shepherd."
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