In Lakeland Dells and Fells

by William T. Palmer

‘“Jim, come on sharp! There’s a regular host of a storm coming. Now, mister, ye’ll have to step lively if we’re to be over the pass before that great whirlwind of snow catches us!”

‘Down the snow-slope we ran, but we had barely reached the track before the gale was on us so strong we could hardly keep our feet. Beside which the snow whirled down so thick that we could hardly see one another even between the gusts.

‘I heard Joe’s voice yell above the storm, “Keep close to me, both of you!” I did my utmost, but as we got on to the plain [bleak] pass-head, with a wild skirl the wind got hold of me, and threw me headforemost into a deep drift. I’m not thinking you’ll believe me, but I had a fearful job getting out of that. The wind seemed almost solid with pelting snow, and every time I staggered to my knees it knocked me flat again.

‘In a few minutes I managed, in a lull between two earth-shaking blasts, to get on to my feet and make a rush for the road, which, at least, was free of snow. Then, jumping up as each gust blew over, and running in the little quiet before another came along, I got to the top of the pass and down into a fairly sheltered cove. Here Jim and Joe hailed me with delight. They were wondering how I had come on, Joe holding that I was all right, and the other being equally sure that some big drift had got me. They had been knocked flat by the gust that almost buried me, after which, taking advantage of every slack in the storm, they had got to shelter a good ten minutes earlier.

‘After this we got down to Joe’s house and waited—the sheep must stick [stay] for the present. The dogs, coming in long before we did, had put the folks out terribly.

‘It was near midnight when the snow passed off and we made a new start. This time our aim was not so much to dig out the lost ones, as to collect and drive down every sheep we could find. It was bright moonlight when we set off; the air was still, and the stars glished [gleamed] down as bright as if they were but a mile away. Have you ever been on a pass-head with mountains all around on a moonlight night? Some folks call it sublime and awesome, but those words mean nothing to plain men like me. Three of us climbing through drifts and along stony roads felt like we did when we were bairns, and ventured alone after dark where we believed ghosts and fairies lived. We used to cower along as if at every step we expected something terrible to happen, with our shoulders drawn in, waiting for a heavy hand to strike us. I remember well my half-sobs and nervous looks around when I had to cross the wood beyond the stepping-stones, where a murder once took place. This time we didn’t sob, though our other feelings were the same.

‘On the pass-head everything was so still that it was quite a relief when Joe whistled his dogs away to the top end of the intake, where a crowd of dark gray dots could be seen on the white. I sent my dogs to watch the further side, keeping them near the places where drifts had buried the fences. Our shouts and whistles seemed strangled in our throats by that queer stillness; but, still, they must have travelled well, for the dogs made never a mistake. The air was cold, freezing cold, but it was still, and the chill was nothing compared to the searching bite of the wind earlier in the day. In about half an hour a mixed flock of my sheep and Joe’s were being brought with loud bleatings down to where we stood.

‘Our return down the pass was done in darkness—if the combined shining of stars, northern lights, and the reflection off miles of snow, is darkness—after which I should have been glad to get to bed awhile. But Joe was determined that the sheep must be dug for at once; the great hollow where most of them lay would fill with water if a sudden thaw came, and any sheep then left in would surely be suffocated. He went the round of his neighbours’ farms to pick up any men that could be spared, while I sent the trap home for what servants my place could do without. Collecting workers is always a tedious job, but in four hours we had nine spademen mustered, and made a move for the third time up the drifted track.

‘Gray dawn was just coming when we got to the top of the pass; the silence of moonlight was gone, and our company’s talk made the dreary hillsides echo. We had plenty of dogs, so a few of us went to Borwen’s Knott—a stiff climb, where every few minutes we seemed to slip back as far as we had dragged forward. My back ached long before we got to where the sheep had been marked, and I lagged behind to rest. When I got up to the others, the dogs had marked down three sheep at no great depth—perhaps a yard or so—and the spades were clearing the snow away like mad. In a minute or two the sheep were clear, and we sent them off towards the pass-road. One of the dogs scented another close in under the crags of the Knott, and to get this out seemed like to give a lot of work. How do these sheep get buried, you say? Well, it’s sheep nature when a storm—wind, snow, rain, or the three together—gets to a certain pitch to lie down with their backs toward it. Like that they bide [remain] till the worst is over, no matter whether they are buried overhead or not. For a sheep can breathe easily through a covering of twenty feet of snow; and as its body-heat thaws a little cave, the weight above, though it may be tons, doesn’t harm it at all. The breathing-places on the snow can be picked out by a man if the sheep aren’t far under; but if they are, it takes a dog all its time to find where the beast lies. Now, as I was saying, these lost sheep at Borwen’s Knott were right in among the rocks, and pretty deep down. The shepherds, however, dug a deep trench in the drift which had plastered itself against the Knott, and after an hour’s hard work the sheep jumped up not a bit worse. At Yew-tree Ghyll a gang got down to the sheep without much trouble; one of them was so lively after passing thirty hours or more in a drift that it butted over three of the shepherds in making for the open.

‘Joe reckoned that twenty-four sheep were in the deepest part of the big ghyll, and that another score could be got at in a day’s work. While the spades were beginning work, I and two of my men took our dogs and went over the whole two intakes thoroughly. At one spot we had a surprise. A hollow in the hillside not more than a yard deep had been drifted level, and in this were, maybe, a dozen rounded lumps—tops of rocks covered with snow, we thought; but my man Jackson, as we crossed the flat, kicked his foot against one, and found nothing hard. He stopped to examine the thing. It was a sheep, lying just as it had turned its back to the storm, not covered with more than a foot of snow. We whistled the dogs up, and as they came floundering along, fully a dozen ewes jumped up and made away.