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

by W. H. Hudson

It comes to this: the shepherd refuses to believe that by taking a hare he is robbing any man of his property, and if he is obliged to tell a lie to save himself from the consequences he does not consider that it is a lie.

When he understood that I was on his side in this question, he told me about a good sheep-dog he once possessed which he had to get rid of because he would not take a hare!

A dog when broken is made to distinguish between the things he must and must not do. He is "feelingly persuaded" by kind words and caresses in one case and hard words and hard blows in the other. He learns that if he hunts hares and rabbits it will be very bad for him, and in due time, after some suffering, he is able to overcome this strongest instinct of a dog. He acquires an artificial conscience. Then, when his education is finished, he must be made to understand that it is not quite finished after all—that he must partially unlearn one of the saddest of the lessons instilled in him. He must hunt a hare or rabbit when told by his master to do so. It is a compact between man and dog. Thus, they have got a law which the dog has sworn to obey; but the man who made it is above the law and can when he thinks proper command his servant to break it. The dog, as a rule, takes it all in very readily and often allows himself more liberty than his master gives him; the most highly accomplished animal is one that, like my shepherd's dog in the former instance, will not stir till he is told. In the other case the poor brute could not rise to the position; it was too complex for him, and when ordered to catch a rabbit he could only put his tail between his legs and look in a puzzled way at his master. "Why do you tell me to do a thing for which I shall be thrashed?"

It was only after Caleb had known me some time, when we were fast friends, that he talked with perfect freedom of these things and told me of his own small, illicit takings without excuse or explanation.

One day he saw a sparrowhawk dash down upon a running partridge and struggle with it on the ground. It was in a grass field, divided from the one he was walking in by a large, unkept hedge without a gap in it to let him through. Presently the hawk rose up with the partridge still violently struggling in its talons, and flew over the hedge to Caleb's side, but was no sooner over than it came down again and the struggle went on once more on the ground. On Caleb running to the spot the hawk flew off, leaving his prey behind. He had grasped it in its sides, driving his sharp claws well in, and the partridge, though unable to fly, was still alive. The shepherd killed it and put it in his pocket, and enjoyed it very much when he came to eat it.

From this case, a most innocent form of poaching, he went on to relate how he had once been able to deprive a cunning poacher and bad man, a human sparrowhawk, of his quarry.

There were two persons in the village, father and son, he very heartily detested, known respectively as Old Gaarge and Young Gaarge, inveterate poachers both. They were worse than the real reprobate who haunted the public-house and did no work and was not ashamed of his evil ways, for these two were hypocrites and were outwardly sober, righteous men, who kept themselves a little apart from their neighbours and were very severe in their condemnation of other people's faults.

One Sunday morning Caleb was on his way to his ewes folded at a distance from the village, walking by a hedgerow at the foot of the down, when he heard a shot fired some way ahead, and after a minute or two a second shot. This greatly excited his curiosity and caused him to keep a sharp look-out in the direction the sounds had come from, and by and by he caught sight of a man walking towards him. It was Old Gaarge in his long smock-frock, proceeding in a leisurely way towards the village, but catching sight of the shepherd he turned aside through a gap in the hedge and went off in another direction to avoid meeting him. No doubt, thought Caleb, he has got his gun in two pieces hidden under his smock. He went on until he came to a small field of oats which had grown badly and had only been half reaped, and here he discovered that Old Gaarge had been lying in hiding to shoot at the partridges that came to feed. He had been screened from the sight of the birds by a couple of hurdles and some straw, and there were feathers of the birds he had shot scattered about. He had finished his Sunday morning's sport and was going back, a little too late on this occasion as it turned out.

Caleb went on to his flock, but before getting to it his dog discovered a dead partridge in the hedge; it had flown that far and then dropped, and there was fresh blood on its feathers. He put it in his pocket and carried it about most of the day while with his sheep on the down. Late in the afternoon he spied two magpies pecking at something out in the middle of a field and went to see what they had found. It was a second partridge which Old Gaarge had shot in the morning and had lost, the bird having flown to some distance before dropping. The magpies had probably found it already dead, as it was cold; they had begun tearing the skin at the neck and had opened it down to the breast-bone. Caleb took this bird, too, and by and by, sitting down to examine it, he thought he would try to mend the torn skin with the needle and thread he always carried inside his cap. He succeeded in stitching it neatly up, and putting back the feathers in their place the rent was quite concealed. That evening he took the two birds to a man in the village who made a livelihood by collecting bones, rags, and things of that kind; the man took the birds in his hand, held them up, felt their weight, examined them carefully, and pronounced them to be two good, fat birds, and agreed to pay two shillings for them.

Such a man may be found in most villages; he calls himself a "general dealer," and keeps a trap and pony—in some cases he keeps the ale-house—and is a useful member of the small, rural community—a sort of human carrion-crow.