Ch. 6: Shepherd Isaac Bawcombe

A noble shepherd--A fighting village blacksmith--Old Joe the collier--A
story of his strength--Donkeys poisoned by yew--The shepherd without his
sheep--How the shepherd killed a deer

To me the most interesting of Caleb's old memories were those relating
to his father, partly on account of the man's fine character, and partly
because they went so far back, beginning in the early years of the last
century.

Altogether he must have been a very fine specimen of a man, both
physically and morally. In Caleb's mind he was undoubtedly the first
among men morally, but there were two other men supposed to be his
equals in bodily strength, one a native of the village, the other a
periodical visitor. The first was Jarvis the blacksmith, a man of an
immense chest and big arms, one of Isaac's greatest friends, and very
good-tempered except when in his cups, for he did occasionally get
drunk, and then he quarrelled with anyone and every one.

One afternoon he had made himself quite tipsy at the inn, and when going
home, swaying about and walking all over the road, he all at once caught
sight of the big shepherd coming soberly on behind. No sooner did he see
him than it occurred to his wild and muddled mind that he had a quarrel
with this very man, Shepherd Isaac, a quarrel of so pressing a nature
that there was nothing to do but to fight it out there and then. He
planted himself before the shepherd and challenged him to fight. Isaac
smiled and said nothing.

"I'll fight thee about this," he repeated, and began tugging at his
coat, and after getting it off again made up to Isaac, who still smiled
and said no word. Then he pulled his waistcoat off, and finally his
shirt, and with nothing but his boots and breeches on once more squared
up to Isaac and threw himself into his best fighting attitude.

"I doan't want to fight thee," said Isaac at length, "but I be thinking
'twould be best to take thee home." And suddenly dashing in he seized
Jarvis round the waist with one arm, grasped him round the legs with the
other, and flung the big man across his shoulder, and carried him off,
struggling and shouting, to his cottage. There at the door, pale and
distressed, stood the poor wife waiting for her lord, when Isaac
arrived, and going straight in dropped the smith down on his own floor,
and with the remark, "Here be your man," walked off to his cottage and
his tea.

The other powerful man was Old Joe the collier, who flourished and was
known in every village in the Salisbury Plain district during the first
thirty-five years of the last century. I first heard of this once famous
man from Caleb, whose boyish imagination had been affected by his
gigantic figure,