In Lakeland Dells and Fells

by William T. Palmer

At this the shepherd himself opened the door. He was dripping wet, but that was what he had been all day, and in his eyes lived tiredness.

‘Will some of you come and give me a hand with the sheep from the top end? I’ll have to have them nearer if they’re to be looked at again to-night.’

Three of us promptly offered our services. Lanterns were brought, and soon we started. Even with our lights not more than ten yards could be seen. Soon I lost touch with the others, and for an hour wandered about the storm-swept fellside. Then in the lulls I began to hear men and dogs and sheep on the move: the others were bringing the flock towards the farm. These men had had an exciting time; snow-fringed ghylls and slippery rock-faces had provided real dangers to avoid.

Home at last! The wearied Ralph, divesting himself of several layers of outer garments, went off to bed. We leisured ones sat by the fireside awhile, yarning of fox and sheep and dog and bird—the sport and work of a mountain farm.

The winter dragged on to its weary close. Many days of tempest came, and were calmly endured. When the weather allowed it, we wandered after sport: sometimes a pack of foxhounds was in the vicinity, or the guns were brought out for a shot at migratory wild-fowl. February ended in genial weather, and for a few days of March it continued. After this came an ominous gradual change in the weather.

For a fortnight or so the bitter east winds raged among the mountains and hissed into the dalehead through the narrow passes. But this was seasonable. In a few more days these fierce blasts would exhaust themselves, and more genial weather follow. But, instead of clearing away, the clouds, our constant companions during the long drear winter, crept further down the rugged braes, and occasional snowflakes hovered in the air. In those scant moments when the gale whirled the beleaguering gray masses aside and showed the uplands, we could see that snow-squalls had been frequent. The glasses at the farm portended unsettled weather, and in the Beck Hause flocks lambs were beginning to come. For three days every hand, in varying degrees of efficiency, had been working restlessly, almost frantically, tending the sheep and the newly-arrived lambs. It was impossible to provide shelter for the two thousand sheep on the holding, so the ewes likely to lamb within the next three days were driven into the most sheltered intake—a bleak place at best in this ‘snerping’ wind.

At mid-day the white fury whirled down; the strong sunshine of spring was cut off by the advancing storm, and we were groping in semi-darkness. So dense were the snow-wreaths that no further than ten yards could be seen at any time, and long ere sunset the ancient horn lanterns were bring used by the shepherds. When struck by a storm, sheep generally get to the cover of the nearest wall or bed of boulders, and to this trait we owed much during the hours of stress which now followed.

A succession of patrols went round the intakes, in which ewes and lambs were huddling in scanty shelter. The storm grew wilder; the snow lay inches deep. I had charge of a small hovel among the farm buildings, where a score of ewes which had already lambed had been driven. So intensely nervous is the average sheep that a light had to be kept burning in the shed, and I had to accustom them to my presence. If my candles had blown out, I was assured that every sheep, in her anxiety, would have endeavoured to ‘mother’ her lambs close to her, with the result that in the confusion most of them would have been trampled upon. Now and again a panic would begin. The sheep, restlessly moving about, would break into plaintive bleatings; but at a word they would be pacified, and relapse into silent suffering. At about midnight the door was opened, and one of the maid-servants relieved me. No one would go to bed till the storm had spent its violence. The gale outside was fearful, and I was badly thrown about in my attempt to cross the few yards to the kitchen door. The other females of the house were busy trying to persuade two little lambs which were lying on the hearthrug to drink some cow’s milk. These poor things were orphans of an hour, for their mother had died from exposure soon after giving them birth. The shepherd had picked the unfortunate little mites up, covered them with his greatcoat, and carried them gently to the warmth and care of the kitchen. I asked casually where the other shepherd was. No one had seen him since he set out, four hours ago, to look over the flock outside the lambing intake. ‘Maybe he had come across some ewes lambing which hadn’t been expected yet.’ After swallowing some supper—I was hungry, else the heat and stench of the hovel I had just left would have destroyed my appetite—I went into the hall to glance at the glass.

The storm still continued, and I prepared to go with Jack the shepherd through the lambing intake. Lanterns and dry coats were ready for us—you live in leggings on a farm some thirteen hundred feet above sea-level in winter—and soon we were outside. The blizzard beat into our faces as we groped across the fold to the gateway. Immediately we passed this, Jack pulled my sleeve, indicating that we should go right ahead. It was no use speaking, for the loudest human voice would have been lost in the storm-clamour. The lambing intake was about one-third of a mile long, on the ‘lown’d,’ or leeward, side of the valley, and the sheep were on the farther side.

We had almost got across the space in the face of the howling tempest, when Jack, taking advantage of a momentary cessation of the gale, shouted: ‘We’d better go up this ghyll—there’s likely one or two in it.’ Accordingly, we plunged into a drift-bounded hollow, and, peering to right and left as far as the feeble rays of our lantern gave light, gradually ascended it. But not a fleece could we discover; some of the snow-banks, indeed, were deep enough to have overwhelmed a flock. At last the shepherd turned his glimmer of light on to a rounded hummock in the spreading white. Something told his practised eye that a sheep was lying here under the lee of a big boulder (the rounded hummock), and in a few seconds we disentombed it. The snow was only a few inches thick, but the ewe’s position was one of great danger. We quietly drove it to the shelter of the wall.