Gents Mag 1891 part 2 p.128
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Gentleman's Magazine 1891 part 2 p.128
man had, some years back, taken a nice little crew of about thirty sheep down to their alloted ground; but he only brought one back. To elicit this miserable information piece by piece - as the old man paused between spells of slicing turnips with part of an old scythe - and to see his countenance assume every aspect of pain, sadness, anxiety, until the final catastrophe, which compelled him to bubble out in shouts of mirth, perhaps slightly hysterical, was a sight well worthy to be seen. The rule is that if a sheep dies the man who joists it receives the wool, the owner the horns. This latter arrangement is a necessary safeguard, because, the horns being branded with the shepherd's name, he knows that the missing sheep has not been disposed of. The young flock are not fit for market, and therefore the temptation to dispose of them is partly removed. But I am not prepared to swear that sheep-stealing has yet entirely disappeared. Some of the places to which farmers are induced to send their sheep do, in fact, turn out very poor indeed. One of my friends, who had a confiding appearance about him, took a flock to a man at the back-end, and set of blithely for them in the April following. He found the number complete, but something about them, which it does not require much freemasonry to explain, caused him to follow them home profoundly and sorrowfully ruminating. They were mere skeletons; and the old country blacksmith, who, no doubt, had passed many a remark" about them during their residence near his smithy, threw himself in the way of the youth. "Are they all alive, my man?" "They are." "Then they've ony just come out bat-i'-hand." "I thought the same," said my informant. It appears that the old smith meant, "They have stayed in, indeed, which is something; but they have done nothing - they have made no score." And he hinted that sheep-owners would do well in future to inquire as to the antecedents of the schoolmaster, whether he were a Dr. Arnold or a Mr. Squeers. Among the chief enemies of sheep are holes. I said that the louk grass keeps them free from disease, and that they thrive well upon it, and I might have added that the flocks which inhabit swampy peat soil are free from "foot-rot." To go further, sheep which are already infected with this disease may be cured by turning them out upon the bog. I may explain that there is a species of bog which is not peaty, but of a clayey, tenacious character. It produces a grass called by the shepherds "fluke grass": a seductive but most pernicious food. But in the bogs are holes - how they get there we shall perhaps see later - and when the sheep is quietly nibbling off |
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