Ch. 19: The Dark People of the Village

How the materials for this book were obtained--The hedgehog-hunter--A
gipsy taste--History of a dark-skinned family--Hedgehog eaters--Half-bred
and true gipsies--Perfect health--Eating carrion--Mysterious knowledge
and faculties--The three dark Wiltshire types--Story of another dark
man of the village--Account of Liddy--His shepherding--A happy life
with horses--Dies of a broken heart--His daughter

I have sometimes laughed to myself when thinking how a large part of the
material composing this book was collected. It came to me in
conversations, at intervals, during several years, with the shepherd. In
his long life in his native village, a good deal of it spent on the
quiet down, he had seen many things it was or would be interesting to
hear; the things which had interested him, too, at the time, and had
fallen into oblivion, yet might be recovered. I discovered that it was
of little use to question him: the one valuable recollection he
possessed on any subject would, as a rule, not be available when wanted;
it would lie just beneath the surface so to speak, and he would pass and
repass over the ground without seeing it. He would not know that it was
there; it would be like the acorn which a jay or squirrel has hidden and
forgotten all about, which he will nevertheless recover some day if by
chance something occurs to remind him of it. The only method was to talk
about the things he knew, and when by chance he was reminded of some old
experience or some little observation or incident worth hearing, to make
a note of it, then wait patiently for something else. It was a very slow
process, but it is not unlike the one we practise always with regard to
wild nature. We are not in a hurry, but are always watchful, with eyes
and ears and mind open to what may come; it is a mental habit, and when
nothing comes we are not disappointed--the act of watching has been a
sufficient pleasure: and when something does come we take it joyfully as
if it were a gift--a valuable object picked up by chance in our walks.

When I turned into the shepherd's cottage, if it was in winter and he
was sitting by the fire, I would sit and smoke with him, and if we were
in a talking mood I would tell him where I had been and what I had heard
and seen, on the heath, in the woods, in the village, or anywhere, on
the chance of its reminding him of something worth hearing in his past
life.

One Sunday morning, in the late summer, during one of my visits to him,
I was out walking in the woods and found a man of the village, a farm
labourer, with his small boy hunting for hedgehogs. He had caught and
killed two, which the boy was carrying. He told me he was very fond of
the flesh of hedgehogs--"pigs," he called them for short; he