. . . in that hut? It does not look as if it were shrapnel proof.”
“Yes, I was there and the sheep had been brought into the pen by the barn. The shrapnel fell all about; see, it made holes through the roof of that barn. I saw some bits of it, which I kept in ma pocket. I wondered whether I should let the sheep out, in case a bomb fell, for, you see, they were all close together. I could see the German aeroplane overhead, and shells bursting all around it. It was at the time they were bombing Paris. Well, we dinna get that in the North of Scotland anyway.”
Fortunately, say all of us, we do not now get that in London either. Of old, the Syrian shepherds watched the stars and awaited the advent of peace; the shepherd in the centre of modern civilization gazed at bursting shards and saw the drama of war performed in the heavens. No fanciful vision of trampling knights and phantom artillery was this; the shepherd had three sons at the Front, and knew the reality of the tragedy. What a brave old chap!
Many persons have wondered what becomes of the London sheep at the end of the season. The answer has already been suggested; they are killed to supply London with a tiny fraction of its meat. Some time before the sale, however, they have to be shorn, and this work is carried out either in Hyde Park or at East Finchley. The shepherd himself could shear a hundred sheep a day with the “clippers”; and on one occasion, his total reached a hundred and twenty. He rarely cut or hurt a . . .