‘I have heard people say that the raven does no harm to the flock, but amply eats up any dead bodies that may be lying on the fells. I have seen, and at that time knew many men who had seen the same thing, ravens descend from the great crags and attack newborn lambs. I say this while believing that hawks, magpies, and carrion crows do not do a fraction of harm to living sheep or lambs. But to talk about any or all of them clearing dead bodies away—it’s sheer nonsense. In three days the mountain beetles, tiny though they be, will clear every particle of flesh from a dead sheep, leaving merely a skeleton of bones and a few patches of wool. The raven is very plucky in defence of its nest, and more than once I have heard of men being attacked by them when after their nests. It’s exciting work clambering about the crags on the end of a thin rope. You will maybe have seen near fox tracks and earths short walls, and perhaps even loop-holed huts built of boulders. So rough are these that few save dalesfolk notice them. They are shelters for shooting from. At dawn and nightfall shepherds lie in wait in these places, and fire upon the foxes as they pass. Few of the shots are successful, owing to the poor light prevailing. The other ways of killing foxes include poison, traps, and digging them out of borrans. Many a score of fox-cubs are taken by the shepherds; they are worth ten shillings apiece to masters of foxhounds in the low country. I have downed many a fox by finding its benk (or place where it lies out in summer), and then getting the sheepdogs to chase it into the open past me.
‘The next job in our summer, of course, was washing and shearing, but it wasn’t often that I had much to do with either of these. A good many sheep were drafted off about this time and sold. Big flocks were sent into Scotland, and I generally got some droving. It was in the days before railways came into this part of the world. Sheep were then sent between buyer and seller by road. I remember, perhaps, best my first journey. I was then with a farmer not so far from Shap Fells—in fact, our sheep grazed on a corner of that big common. Our master and his neighbours sold altogether five thousand sheep to go to a farm which was being newly stocked near John o’ Groats—right away up in the North of Scotland. John Todd and myself were picked out to drive them, and one Friday morning we were to start. With our dogs at heel, we walked down to the lowermost farm in the dale which was sending sheep. It was a bonny morning. Skylarks, though the stars were hardly gone, were whirling up, singing as only wild birds can. The beck rattled down among the rocks and gurgled into the dubs. There had been rain in the night, and when the sun got up every grass-blade shone with wee drops. To a stranger, maybe, our dale looks wild and desolate, but to me it was home. We passed the school where I learnt my few lessons, and stopped at the next farm—old Donald Morris had it then.
‘“Come in—come in, John!” called the old farmer, as our clog-irons rang on the paved fold. “What, Jimmy! is thoo gaen [going] with t’ sheep?”
‘“Ay!” I said.
‘“Well, come on and have some breakfast wi’ us; we’re just sitting down.”
‘But I was glad John Todd said nay, for the word “breakfast” put me by it [made me disinclined]. You’ll understand what it is for a lad leaving his home-dale for the first time. We shepherds think a lot of home, though it means cold flagged floors, rough-beamed dark rooms, and leaking roofs, with whitewashed cottage walls, and maybe a straggly stick-heap outside.
‘Donald came with us, and showed us the batch of his sheep we were to take.
‘“They’ll be a bit bad to manage, maybe, till you get out of the sound of the lambs,” said he. “Here, Toss, Nell, get away by” [pass beyond the sheep].
‘In a minute the dogs had driven the tiny flock out upon the dale-road, and there they were restlessly moving back and forward, waiting for us to commence our long drive.
‘“Noo, Jimmy,” said the old man, pressing the first crown piece of my own I had ever possessed into my hand, “mind thoo does as John bids thee. I remember thy father’s first droving; it was frae here into Scotland. It’s a lang while sen.”