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

by W. H. Hudson

No doubt in this case the dog had recognized his old home when taken by it, but he was in another man's hands now, and the habits and discipline of a life made it impossible for him to desert until that old, familiar, and imperative call reached his ears and he could not disobey.

Then (to go on with Caleb's reminiscences) there was Badger, owned by a farmer and worked for some years by Caleb—the very best stump-tail he ever had to help him. This dog differed from others in his vivacious temper and ceaseless activity. When the sheep were feeding quietly and there was little or nothing to do for hours at a time, he would not lie down and go to sleep like any other sheep-dog, but would spend his vacant time "amusing of hisself" on some smooth slope where he could roll over and over; then run back and roll over again and again, playing by himself just like a child. Or he would chase a butterfly or scamper about over the down hunting for large white flints, which he would bring one by one and deposit them at his master's feet, pretending they were something of value and greatly enjoying the game. This dog, Caleb said, would make him laugh every day with his games and capers.

When Badger got old his sight and hearing failed; yet when he was very nearly blind and so deaf that he could not hear a word of command, even when it was shouted out quite close to him, he was still kept with the flock because he was so intelligent and willing. But he was too old at last; it was time for him to be put out of the way. The farmer, however, who owned him, would not consent to have him shot, and so the wistful old dog was ordered to keep at home at the farm-house. Still he refused to be superannuated, and not allowed to go to the flock he took to shepherding the fowls. In the morning he would drive them out to their run and keep them there in a flock, going round and round them by the hour, and furiously hunting back the poor hens that tried to steal off to lay their eggs in some secret place. This could not be allowed, and so poor old Badger, who would have been too miserable if tied up, had to be shot after all.

These were always his best stories—his recollections of sheep-dogs, for of all creatures, sheep alone excepted, he knew and loved them best. Yet for one whose life had been spent in that small isolated village and on the bare down about it, his range was pretty wide, and it even included one memory of a visitor from the other world. Let him tell it in his own words.

"Many say they don't believe there be such things as ghosties. They niver see'd 'n. An' I don't say I believe or disbelieve what I hear tell. I warn't there to see. I only know what I see'd myself: but I don't say that it were a ghostie or that it wasn't one. I was coming home late one night from the sheep; 'twere close on 'leven o'clock, a very quiet night, with moonsheen that made it a'most like day. Near th' end of the village I come to the stepping-stones, as we call 'n, where there be a gate and the road, an' just by the road the four big white stones for people going from the village to the copse an' the down on t'other side to step over the water. In winter 'twas a stream there, but the water it dried in summer, and now 'twere summer-time and there wur no water. When I git there I see'd two women, both on 'em tall, with black gowns on, an' big bonnets they used to wear; an' they were standing face to face so close that the tops o' their bonnets wur a'most touching together. Who be these women out so late? says I to myself. Why, says I, they be Mrs. Durk from up in the village an' Mrs. Gaarge Durk, the keeper's wife down by the copse. Then I thought I know'd how 'twas: Mrs. Gaarge, she'd a been to see Mrs. Durk in the village, and Mrs. Durk she were coming out a leetel way with her, so far as the stepping-stones, and they wur just having a last leetel talk before saying Good night. But mind, I hear'd no talking when I passed 'n. An' I'd hardly got past 'n before I says, Why, what a fool be I! Mrs. Durk she be dead a twelvemonth, an' I were in the churchyard and see'd her buried myself. Whatever be I thinking of? That made me stop and turn round to look at 'n agin. An' there they was just as I see'd 'n at first—Mrs. Durk, who was dead a twelvemonth, an' Mrs. Gaarge Durk from the copse, standing there with their bonnets a'most touching together. An' I couldn't hear nothing—no talking, they were so still as two posties. Then something came over me like a tarrible coldness in the blood and down my back, an' I were afraid, and turning I runned faster than I ever runned in my life, an' never stopped—not till I got to the cottage."

It was not a bad ghost story: but then such stories seldom are when coming from those who have actually seen, or believe they have seen, an immaterial being. Their principal charm is in their infinite variety; you never find two real or true ghost stories quite alike, and in this they differ from the weary inventions of the fictionist.

But invariably the principal subject was sheep.

"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 God 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."