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

by W. H. Hudson

Yarnborough Castle sheep-fair—Caleb leaves Doveton and goes into Dorset—A land of strange happenings—He is home-sick and returns to Winterbourne Bishop—Joseph, his brother, leaves home—His meeting with Caleb's old master—Settles in Dorset and is joined by his sister Hannah—They marry and have children—I go to look for them—Joseph Bawcombe in extreme old age—Hannah in decline

Caleb's shepherding period in Doveton came to a somewhat sudden conclusion. It was nearing the end of August and he was beginning to think about the sheep which would have to be taken to the "Castle" sheep-fair on 5th October, and it appeared strange to him that his master had so far said nothing to him on the subject. By "Castle" he meant Yarnborough Castle, the name of a vast prehistoric earthwork on one of the high downs between Warminster and Amesbury. There is no village there and no house near; it is nothing but an immense circular wall and trench, inside of which the fair is held. It was formerly one of the most important sheep-fairs in the country, but for the last two or three decades has been falling off and is now of little account. When Bawcombe was shepherd at Doveton it was still great, and when he first went there as Mr. Ellerby's head-shepherd he found himself regarded as a person of considerable importance at the Castle. Before setting out with the sheep he asked for his master's instructions, and was told that when he got to the ground he would be directed by the persons in charge to the proper place. The Ellerbys, he said, had exhibited and sold their sheep there for a period of eighty-eight years, without missing a year, and always at the same spot. Every person visiting the fair on business knew just where to find the Ellerbys' sheep, and, he added with pride, they expected them to be the best sheep at the Castle.

One day Mr. Ellerby came to have a talk with his shepherd, and in reply to a remark of the latter about the October sheep-fair he said that he would have no sheep to send. "No sheep to send, master!" exclaimed Caleb in amazement. Then Mr. Ellerby told him that he had taken a notion into his head that he wanted to go abroad with his wife for a time, and that some person had just made him so good an offer for all his sheep that he was going to accept it, so that for the first time in eighty-eight years there would be no sheep from Doveton Farm at the Castle fair. When he came back he would buy again; but if he could live away from the farm, he would probably never come back—he would sell it.

Caleb went home with a heavy heart and told his wife. It grieved her, too, because of her feeling for Mrs. Ellerby, but in a little while she set herself to comfort him. "Why, what's wrong about it?" she asked. "'Twill be more 'n three months before the year's out, and master'll pay for all the time sure, and we can go home to Bishop and bide a little without work, and see if that father of yours has forgiven 'ee for going away to Warminster."

So they comforted themselves, and were beginning to think with pleasure of home when Mr. Ellerby informed his shepherd that a friend of his, a good man though not a rich one, was anxious to take him as head-shepherd, with good wages and a good cottage rent free. The only drawback for the Bawcombes was that it would take them still farther from home, for the farm was in Dorset, although quite near the Wiltshire border.

Eventually they accepted the offer, and by the middle of September were once more settled down in what was to them a strange land. How strange it must have seemed to Caleb, how far removed from home and all familiar things, when even to this day, more than forty years later, he speaks of it as the ordinary modern man might speak of a year's residence in Uganda, Tierra del Fuego, or the Andaman Islands! It was a foreign country, and the ways of the people were strange to him, and it was a land of very strange things. One of the strangest was an old ruined church in the neighbourhood of the farm where he was shepherd. It was roofless, more than half fallen down, and all the standing portion, with the tower, overgrown with old ivy; the building itself stood in the centre of a huge round earthwork and trench, with large barrows on the ground outside the circle. Concerning this church he had a wonderful story: its decay and ruin had come about after the great bell in the tower had mysteriously disappeared, stolen one stormy night, it was believed, by the Devil himself. The stolen bell, it was discovered, had been flung into a small river at a distance of some miles from the church, and there in summer-time, when the water was low, it could be distinctly seen lying half buried in the mud at the bottom. But all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't pull it out; the Devil, who pulled the other way, was strongest. Eventually some wise person said that a team of white oxen would be able to pull it out, and after much seeking the white oxen were obtained, and thick ropes were tied to the sunken bell, and the cattle were goaded and yelled at, and tugged and strained until the bell came up and was finally drawn right up to the top of the steep, cliff-like bank of the stream. Then one of the teamsters shouted in triumph, "Now we've got out the bell, in spite of all the devils in hell," and no sooner had he spoken the bold words than the ropes parted, and back tumbled the bell to its old place at the bottom of the river, where it remains to this day. Caleb had once met a man in those parts who assured him that he had seen the bell with his own eyes, lying nearly buried in mud at the bottom of the stream.

The legend is not in the history of Dorset; a much more prosaic account of the disappearance of the bell is there given, in which the Devil took no part unless he was at the back of the bad men who were concerned in the business. But in this strange, remote country, outside of "Wiltsheer," Bawcombe was in a region where anything might have happened, where the very soil and pasture were unlike that of his native country, and the mud adhered to his boots in a most unaccountable way. It was almost uncanny. Doubtless he was home-sick, for a month or two before the end of the year he asked his master to look out for another shepherd.

This was a great disappointment to the farmer: he had gone a distance from home to secure a good shepherd, and had hoped to keep him permanently, and now after a single year he was going to lose him. What did the shepherd want? He would do anything to please him, and begged him to stay another year. But no, his mind was set on going back to his own native village and to his own people. And so when his long year was ended he took his crook and set out over the hills and valleys, followed by a cart containing his "sticks" and wife and children. And at home with his old parents and his people he was happy once more; in a short time he found a place as head-shepherd, with a cottage in the village, and followed his flock on the old familiar down, and everything again was as it had been from the beginning of life and as he desired it to be even to the end.

His return resulted incidentally in other changes and migrations in the Bawcombe family. His elder brother Joseph, unmarried still although his senior by about eight years, had not got on well at home. He was a person of a peculiar disposition, so silent with so fixed and unsmiling an expression, that he gave the idea of a stolid, thick-skinned man, but at bottom he was of a sensitive nature, and feeling that his master did not treat him properly, he gave up his place and was for a long time without one. He was singularly attentive to all that fell from Caleb about his wide wanderings and strange experiences, especially in the distant Dorset country; and at length, about a year after his brother's return, he announced his intention of going away from his native place for good to seek his fortune in some distant place where his services would perhaps be better appreciated. When asked where he intended going, he answered that he was going to look for a place in that part of Dorset where Caleb had been shepherd for a year and had been so highly thought of.

Now Joseph, being a single man, had no "sticks"; all his possessions went into a bundle, which he carried tied to his crook, and with his sheep-dog following at his heels he set forth early one morning on the most important adventure of his life. Then occurred an instance of what we call a coincidence, but which the shepherd of the downs, nursed in the old beliefs and traditions, prefers to regard as an act of providence.