Ch. 24: Living in the Past

Evening talks--On the construction of sheep-folds--Making
hurdles--Devil's guts--Character in sheep-dogs--Sally the spiteful
dog--Dyke the lost dog who returned--Strange recovery of a lost
dog--Badger the playful dog--Badger shepherds the fowls--A ghost
story--A Sunday-evening talk--Parsons and ministers--Noisy
religion--The shepherd's love of his calling--Mark Dick and the
giddy sheep--Conclusion

During our frequent evening talks, often continued till a late hour, it
was borne in on Caleb Bawcombe that his anecdotes of wild creatures
interested me more than anything else he had to tell; but in spite of
this, or because he could not always bear it in mind, the conversation
almost invariably drifted back to the old subject of sheep, of which he
was never tired. Even in his sleep he does not forget them; his dreams,
he says, are always about sheep; he is with the flock, shifting the
hurdles, or following it out on the down. A troubled dream when he is
ill or uneasy in his sleep is invariably about some difficulty with the
flock; it gets out of his control, and the dog cannot understand him or
refuses to obey when everything depends on his instant action. The
subject was so much to him, so important above all others, that he would
not spare the listener even the minutest details of the shepherd's life
and work. His "hints on the construction of sheep-folds" would have
filled a volume; and if any farmer had purchased the book he would not
have found the title a misleading one and that he had been defrauded of
his money. But with his singular fawn-like face and clear eyes on his
listener it was impossible to fall asleep, or even to let the attention
wander; and incidentally even in his driest discourse there were little
bright touches which one would not willingly have missed.

About hurdles he explained that it was common for the downland shepherds
to repair the broken and worn-out ones with the long woody stems of the
bithywind from the hedges; and when I asked what the plant was he
described the wild clematis or traveller's-joy; but those names he did
not know--to him the plant had always been known as _bithywind_ or
else _Devil's guts_. It struck me that bithywind might have come by
the transposition of two letters from withybind, as if one should say
flutterby for butterfly, or flagondry for dragonfly. Withybind is one of
the numerous vernacular names of the common convolvulus. Lilybind is
another. But what would old Gerarde, who invented the pretty name of
traveller's-joy for that ornament of the wayside hedges, have said to
such a name as Devil's guts?

There was, said Caleb, an old farmer in the parish of Bishop who had a
peculiar fondness for this plant, and if a shepherd pulled any