



Produced by Eric Eldred, David Garcia, Charles Franks, and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team











A SHEPHERD'S LIFE

IMPRESSIONS OF THE SOUTH WILTSHIRE DOWNS

BY W. H. HUDSON







NOTE

I an obliged to Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. for permission to make
use of an article entitled "A Shepherd of the Downs," which appeared in
the October and November numbers of _Longmans' Magazine_ in 1902.
With the exception of that article, portions of which I have
incorporated in different chapters, the whole of the matter contained in
this work now appears for the first time.






CONTENTS

Chapter.

      I. SALISBURY PLAIN

     II. SALISBURY AS I SEE IT

    III. WINTERBOURNE BISHOP

     IV. A SHEPHERD OF THE DOWNS

      V. EARLY MEMORIES

     VI. SHEPHERD ISAAC BAWCOMBE

    VII. THE DEER-STEALERS

   VIII. SHEPHERDS AND POACHING

     IX. THE SHEPHERD ON FOXES

      X. BIRD LIFE ON THE DOWNS

     XI. STARLINGS AND SHEEP-BELLS

    XII. THE SHEPHERD AND THE BIBLE

   XIII. VALE OF THE WYLYE

    XIV. A SHEEP-DOG'S LIFE

     XV. THE ELLERBYS OF DOVETON

    XVI. OLD WILTSHIRE DAYS

   XVII. OLD WILTSHIRE DAYS (_continued_)

  XVIII. THE SHEPHERD'S RETURN

    XIX. THE DARK PEOPLE OF THE VILLAGE

     XX. SOME SHEEP-DOGS

    XXI. THE SHEPHERD AS NATURALIST

   XXII. THE MASTER OF THE VILLAGE

  XXIII. ISAAC'S CHILDREN

   XXIV. LIVING IN THE PAST







A SHEPHERD'S LIFE

SALISBURY PLAIN

CHAPTER I

  Introductory remarks--Wiltshire little favoured by tourists--Aspect of
  the downs--Bad weather--Desolate aspect--The bird-scarer--Fascination
  of the downs--The larger Salisbury Plain--Effect of the military
  occupation--A century's changes--Birds--Old Wiltshire sheep--Sheep-horns
  in a well--Changes wrought by cultivation--Rabbit-warrens on the
  downs--Barrows obliterated by the plough and by rabbits


Wiltshire looks large on the map of England, a great green county, yet
it never appears to be a favourite one to those who go on rambles in the
land. At all events I am unable to bring to mind an instance of a lover
of Wiltshire who was not a native or a resident, or had not been to
Marlborough and loved the country on account of early associations. Nor
can I regard myself as an exception, since, owing to a certain kind of
adaptiveness in me, a sense of being at home wherever grass grows, I am
in a way a native too. Again, listen to any half-dozen of your friends
discussing the places they have visited, or intend visiting, comparing
notes about the counties, towns, churches, castles, scenery--all that
draws them and satisfies their nature, and the chances are that they
will not even mention Wiltshire. They all know it "in a way"; they have
seen Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge, which everybody must go to look
at once in his life; and they have also viewed the country from the
windows of a railroad carriage as they passed through on their flight to
Bath and to Wales with its mountains, and to the west country, which
many of us love best of all--Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. For there is
nothing striking in Wiltshire, at all events to those who love nature
first; nor mountains, nor sea, nor anything to compare with the places
they are hastening to, west or north. The downs! Yes, the downs are
there, full in sight of your window, in their flowing forms resembling
vast, pale green waves, wave beyond wave, "in fluctuation fixed"; a fine
country to walk on in fine weather for all those who regard the mere
exercise of walking as sufficient pleasure. But to those who wish for
something more, these downs may be neglected, since, if downs are
wanted, there is the higher, nobler Sussex range within an hour of
London. There are others on whom the naked aspect of the downs has a
repelling effect. Like Gilpin they love not an undecorated earth; and
false and ridiculous as Gilpin's taste may seem to me and to all those
who love the chalk, which "spoils everything" as Gilpin said, he
certainly expresses a feeling common to those who are unaccustomed to
the emptiness and silence of these great spaces.

As to walking on the downs, one remembers that the fine days are not so
many, even in the season when they are looked for--they have certainly
been few during this wet and discomfortable one of 1909. It is indeed
only on the chalk hills that I ever feel disposed to quarrel with this
English climate, for all weathers are good to those who love the open
air, and have their special attractions. What a pleasure it is to be out
in rough weather in October when the equinoctial gales are on, "the wind
Euroclydon," to listen to its roaring in the bending trees, to watch the
dead leaves flying, the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow and black
and red, whirled away in flight on flight before the volleying blast,
and to hear and see and feel the tempests of rain, the big silver-grey
drops that smite you like hail! And what pleasure too, in the still grey
November weather, the time of suspense and melancholy before winter, a
strange quietude, like a sense of apprehension in nature! And so on
through the revolving year, in all places in all weathers, there is
pleasure in the open air, except on these chalk hills because of their
bleak nakedness. There the wind and driving rain are not for but against
you, and may overcome you with misery. One feels their loneliness,
monotony, and desolation on many days, sometimes even when it is not
wet, and I here recall an amusing encounter with a bird-scarer during
one of these dreary spells.

It was in March, bitterly cold, with an east wind which had been blowing
many days, and overhead the sky was of a hard, steely grey. I was
cycling along the valley of the Ebble, and finally leaving it pushed up
a long steep <DW72> and set off over the high plain by a dusty road with
the wind hard against me. A more desolate scene than the one before me
it would be hard to imagine, for the land was all ploughed and stretched
away before me, an endless succession of vast grey fields, divided by
wire fences. On all that space there was but one living thing in sight,
a human form, a boy, far away on the left side, standing in the middle
of a big field with something which looked like a gun in his hand.
Immediately after I saw him he, too, appeared to have caught sight of
me, for turning he set off running as fast as he could over the ploughed
ground towards the road, as if intending to speak to me. The distance he
would have to run was about a quarter of a mile and I doubted that he
would be there in time to catch me, but he ran fast and the wind was
against me, and he arrived at the road just as I got to that point.
There by the side of the fence he stood, panting from his race, his
handsome face glowing with colour, a boy about twelve or thirteen, with
a fine strong figure, remarkably well dressed for a bird-scarer. For
that was what he was, and he carried a queer, heavy-looking old gun. I
got off my wheel and waited for him to speak, but he was silent, and
continued regarding me with the smiling countenance of one well pleased
with himself. "Well?" I said, but there was no answer; he only kept on
smiling.

"What did you want?" I demanded impatiently.

"I didn't want anything."

"But you started running here as fast as you could the moment you caught
sight of me."

"Yes, I did."

"Well, what did you do it for--what was your object in running here?"

"Just to see you pass," he answered.

It was a little ridiculous and vexed me at first, but by and by when I
left him, after some more conversation, I felt rather pleased; for it
was a new and somewhat flattering experience to have any person run a
long distance over a ploughed field, burdened with a heavy gun, "just to
see me pass."

But it was not strange in the circumstances; his hours in that grey,
windy desolation must have seemed like days, and it was a break in the
monotony, a little joyful excitement in getting to the road in time to
see a passer-by more closely, and for a few moments gave him a sense of
human companionship. I began even to feel a little sorry for him, alone
there in his high, dreary world, but presently thought he was better off
and better employed than most of his fellows poring over miserable books
in school, and I wished we had a more rational system of education for
the agricultural districts, one which would not keep the children shut
up in a room during all the best hours of the day, when to be out of
doors, seeing, hearing, and doing, would fit them so much better for the
life-work before them. Squeers' method was a wiser one. We think less of
it than of the delightful caricature, which makes Squeers "a joy for
ever," as Mr. Lang has said of Pecksniff. But Dickens was a Londoner,
and incapable of looking at this or any other question from any other
than the Londoner's standpoint. Can you have a better system for the
children of all England than this one which will turn out the most
perfect draper's assistant in Oxford Street, or, to go higher, the most
efficient Mr. G