A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs Part 17

"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 vicar 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 G.o.d 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 vicar 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 the Church, and that's not true religion: I say that the Bible teaches different."

Caleb could not have had a very wide experience, and most of us know Dissenting ministers who are 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 bra.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced it, im-madge-i-na-shun, 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 the tremendous word, dragging it out gratingly, so as to ill.u.s.trate 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 h.e.l.l'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 penn'orth of milk, to a newspaper or a book or a picture or a religion--they must howl and yell it out at every pa.s.ser-by. 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 'bout that, but agreed that it was very quiet on the downs, and that he loved their quiet. "Fifty years," he said, "I've been on the downs and fields, day and night, seven days a week, and I've been told that it's a poor way to spend a life, working seven days for ten or twelve, or at most thirteen s.h.i.+llings. But I never seen it like that; I liked it, and I always did my best. You see, sir, I took a pride in it. I never left a place but I was asked to stay. When I left it was because of something I didn't like. I couldn't never abide cruelty to a dog or any beast. And I couldn't abide bad language. If my master swore at the sheep or the dog I wouldn't bide with he--no, not for a pound a week. I liked my work, and I liked knowing things about sheep. Not things in books, for I never had no books, but what I found out with my own sense, if you can understand me.

"I remember, when I were young, a very old shepherd on the farm; he had been more 'n forty years there, and he was called Mark d.i.c.k. 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 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 gits a giddy sheep.' Some time after that Mark d.i.c.k 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, some time after that I had a giddy one in my flock. I'd been thinking of what Mark d.i.c.k had told me, so I caught the ewe to see if I could find out anything. I were always a tarrible 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 'n 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 knife, but I found out there were some I couldn't cure. They had no swelling, and was giddy because they'd got a maggot on 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 favourite subjects 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 mult.i.tudinous tremulous bleatings of the sheep, the tinklings of numerous bells, and crisp ringing bark of his dog. But his heart was there still, 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 favourite 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 humour in some farmer or shepherd he had known in the vanished time--his father, perhaps, or old John, or Mark d.i.c.k, or Liddy, or Dan'l Burdon, the solemn seeker after buried treasure.

After our long Sunday talk we were silent for a time, and then he uttered these impressive words: "I don't say that I want to have my life again, because 'twould be sinful. We must take what is sent. But if 'twas offered to me and I 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."