Ch. 12: The Shepherd and the Bible

Dan'l Burdon, the treasure-seeker--The shepherd's feeling for the
Bible--Effect of the pastoral life--The shepherd's story of Isaac's
boyhood--The village on the Wylye

One of the shepherd's early memories was of Dan'l Burdon, a labourer on
the farm where Isaac Bawcombe was head-shepherd. He retained a vivid
recollection of this person, who had a profound gravity and was the most
silent man in the parish. He was always thinking about hidden treasure,
and all his spare time was spent in seeking for it. On a Sunday morning,
or in the evening after working hours, he would take a spade or pick and
go away over the hills on his endless search after "something he could
not find." He opened some of the largest barrows, making trenches six to
ten feet deep through them, but found nothing to reward him. One day he
took Caleb with him, and they went to a part of the down where there
were certain depressions in the turf of a circular form and six to seven
feet in circumference. Burdon had observed these basin-like depressions
and had thought it possible they marked the place where things of value
had been buried in long-past ages. To begin he cut the turf all round
and carefully removed it, then dug and found a thick layer of flints.
These removed, he came upon a deposit of ashes and charred wood. And
that was all. Burdon without a word set to work to put it all back in
its place again--ashes and wood, and earth and flints--and having trod
it firmly down he carefully replaced the turf, then leaning on his spade
gazed silently at the spot for a space of several minutes. At last he
spoke. "Maybe, Caleb, you've beared tell about what the Bible says of
burnt sacrifice. Well now, I be of opinion that it were here. They
people the Bible says about, they come up here to sacrifice on White
Bustard Down, and these be the places where they made their fires."

Then he shouldered his spade and started home, the boy following.
Caleb's comment was: "I didn't say nothing to un because I were only a
leetel boy and he were a old man; but I knowed better than that all the
time, because them people in the Bible they was never in England at all,
so how could they sacrifice on White Bustard Down in Wiltsheer?"

It was no idle boast on his part. Caleb and his brothers had been taught
their letters when small, and the Bible was their one book, which they
read not only in the evenings at home but out on the downs during the
day when they were with the flock. His extreme familiarity with the
whole Scripture narrative was a marvel to me; it was also strange,
considering how intelligent a man he was, that his lifelong reading of
that one book had made no change in his rude "Wiltsheer" speech.