Since this was written, the extent of many pasture-lands has been lessened; but there are still places where the sheep have a whole mountain, or several mountains, to roam over, and live in a state of considerable freedom and liveliness. An old man who used to spend the summer months at the top of a high pass in the Lake District, where he sold refreshments to tourists, and slept in a little hut built right into the steep hillside, told me that his only discomfort arose from the noisy gambols of the sheep, who kept him awake by disporting themselves on his grassy roof after nightfall. Thus, like the lady in Locksley Hall, he must lie and ponder—
In the dead unhappy night, and when the ram is on the roof.
Imagine any one suffering in this manner from the frolics of our south-country muttons!
The mountain lambs, especially, have a rare sprightliness and beauty, and there is scarcely a more lovely picture to be seen among the hills than one of these superb little creatures poised intrepid on a high rock or wall as the traveller passes below, and looking down on him with an innocent and wistful curiosity. Such a sight makes it pitiful to remember to what base uses man has turned the sheep, and how degraded is the domestic breed, as we commonly see it, from the glorious wild animals described in the Mountains of California. “The domestic sheep,” says Muir, “is expressionless, like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as flowers of his mountain pastures.”
The sheep of the Welsh hills and the Cumbrian fells is a sort of connecting-link between Muir’s ovis montana and the silly creature of our meadows; but it must be admitted that he sadly lacks the marvellous climbing powers of his wilder relative, for when he ventures on the tempting ledges of turf that intersect the sheer precipices he sometimes shares the fate of the “meek mountain lamb” in Scott’s “Helvellyn.”
I once saw an unfortunate “cragbound” sheep on a narrow and very dangerous terrace that overhangs the great eastern verge of Tryfan, where, having eaten all the grass on the ledge, she was peering nervously about, trying to summon up the courage to make a backward leap to safety. After descending from the mountain, I called at the farm below, and got a promise that the sheep should somehow be saved from its plight; but on the following day I found the same tragedy proceeding. Again I sought and received assurances from the shepherds that they would go with ropes to the rescue, but as I had to leave Wales the next morning I never learnt the sequel, which I fear may have yielded more satisfaction to the ravens than to the sheep.
If the mountain sheep must be deemed half wild, can less be said of that lean, gaunt, hungry, savage, but highly intelligent animal, the sheep-dog of Cumberland or Wales? It is one thing to see these “friends of man” in their educated capacity, collecting or dispersing the sheep under their owner’s vociferous bidding; it is quite another thing to see them gorging ravenously on a carrion sheep, and slinking off with wolfish demeanour when disturbed. Historians may tell us that “the last wolf” was killed among these mountains some centuries back; but we make bold to doubt that assertion when surrounded by half a dozen bristling “Gelerts” in the wilds of Wales, for it would then seem that not a little of the character of canis lupus has survived in domestication. For my part, I would rather meet a Welsh bull on an open grass-slope than a pack of these snarling sheep-dogs when their master is out of call, for I can bear witness that at such a moment Mr. Jack London’s choicest wolf-stories are brought too forcibly to mind, and that “the call of the wild” has an unpleasant reality of its own. The traveller who has been followed halfway up Carnedd Llewelyn by a troop of these “white-fangs,” in an interval of their duties at the sheep-washing in Llyn Llugwy, will be able to form at least an “intelligent anticipation” of how it feels to be pursued by real wolves in the forests of the north-west. The mountain sheep-dog is still half a wolf, and not without reason has Mr. Thompson Seton made sheep-dogs the heroes of two of the chapters of his Wild Animals I have Known.
I have incidentally mentioned the bull; and who that has walked much in Carnarvonshire or Merioneth will be so pedantic as to deny the bull his place among the fauna of these districts? Theoretically, no doubt, he must be classed with the domestic; but in practice there are times when his domesticity is apt to be doubted by the wayfarer, and when even the cheery assurances of the Welsh herdsman (if within hail) that “she will do nothing to you,” leave much to be desired. Turned out in early summer on the roadways and hill-slopes, with that national disregard for Saxon weaknesses which has characterized the Cymry from of old, the black bulls of these hilly regions are an element that has to be taken into account, together with winds and waters, in the traveller’s plan of campaign. I have known a party of tourists compelled to elect between meeting the angry animal or relinquishing the direct ascent—a choice between bull and “bwlch”—and unanimously agreed in favour of a rearward move. I once camped with a friend for a fortnight in an artist’s van, pitched on an open plot in an upland valley where a big bull was pastured; and when we heard him in the darkness playfully scratching back or sharpening horns on our door-step, we bethought us of those weird stories of wild life in the backwoods, where the dwellers in the lonely log-hut hear the long-drawn sniff of the strolling bear, as he “samples” them under their bolted door at night.
In some of the valleys round Snowdon there is a strange-looking breed of black and white Scandinavian cattle, whose appearance at close quarters on a dark night is rather eerie, because only the white part of each animal is easily visible, and the traveller has the spectacle of a detached head, or shoulder, or hind-quarter, as the case may be, confronting him through the gloom.
As a rule, it is only in spells of great heat, such as occasionally descend upon the mountains, that the bulls are really dangerous, and then they are seldom approached, even by the herdsman, without the aid of dogs. It is said that the most ominous symptom on the bull’s part is when, instead of the usual shrill bellow, he gives vent to a low querulous grumbling sound, which seems to imply a deeply felt long-cherished grievance; at such times it is wise to give him a wide berth. After all, can we men complain, if the bull sometimes shows himself dissatisfied with our treatment of his fellows? Who knows but that his splenetic outbursts have some reference to the massacre of his kith and kin at the hands of the “family butcher,” or to the savage dietetic habits of the very people who denounce him as “the savage brute”? What I have thought a little hard, however, is that no discrimination is made by the bull between beef-eater and vegetarian, and that the peaceful pilgrim who has not tasted sirloin for over forty years is compelled to skulk up the hill under cover of a stone wall as guiltily as the shameless intruder who has a beef-sandwich in his pocket. Some vegetarians, I believe, advocate the wearing of a badge; there would be more to be said in favour of the distinction, if the black bulls of Snowdonia would consent to recognize such flag of truce.