Gents Mag 1891 part 2 p.124
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introduction, lists | ||
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list, 4th qtr 19th century | ||
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Gentleman's Magazine 1891 part 2 p.124
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sheep farm
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Moorland Sheep
A MOORLAND SHEEP-FARM. I HAVE at last found a man who does not love the moors. It was quite by accident, and consequently the shock was a little more severe. But it came out so gently, and I was taken into confidence so simply as a fellow-thinker, that I nearly proved a traitor to my best beloved. I had just sufficient bravery to refer with apology to the summer flush of the heather, and memory enough to recall Mr. Ruskin, whose words are ever our best rallying cries - "beds a foot deep in flowers, and close in tufted cushions, and the mountain air that floated over them rich in honey like a draught of metheglin." I may be wrong, but I think that one who loves the moors is not content with their artistic glories alone; he lives in sympathy with all the tiresome routine and startling vicissitudes of the numerous denizens of the airy and bleak uplands; he is a moor bird, and, to parody Terence, everything connected with the moors is most interesting to him. Are there any others, I wonder, who will share with me an interest in the affairs and in the sorrows of a moorland farmer? A moorland farm is not necessarily situated entirely on the moors. Many of the farmers who go by this name have land which, while it lifts its face into the sky to smile, stoops down also to the riverside to drink under the shade of trees. The lower ground is invaluable for supplementing the use of the moors. The produce of these "beds a foot deep in flowers" may be divided into three parts, namely, mutton and wool, game, and honey, yielded by sheep, grouse, and bees. The mention of these items in connection seems to us somewhat incongruous, for what has a moorland farmer to do with grouse and bees? And yet the three seem to go so well together, they sound so much like a northern promised land, that we feel disposed to cast the burden of incongruity rather upon circumstances and ordinances than upon the idea itself. Before speculating further on this matter let us inquire a little into the stock and methods of one of these farmers, whose sheep run |
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