MouiUain Breeds of Sheej). 371 



that they wore from the Vale of Conway, and about Aber and its 

 Penmaen Mawr, would not satisfy a man of strictly eclectic 

 appetite. For Welsh wool, pure and simple, the hig'hest quo- 

 tation has been \bd. From Id. to 2d. less has been recently 

 snade for it, and \s. Sd. for the cross-bred. Both are bought by 

 the Yorkshire and Lancashire wool staplers. The Welsh people 

 still knit stockings and comforters as industriously as ever from 

 the old sort ; and there are mills in Anglesea and Caernarvonshire 

 where flannels, blankets, and winseys (a sort of tweed) are manu- 

 factured principally for home consumption. 



Radnorshire, or, as i^ was once termed from the bench, " that 

 little sheep-walk, which calls itself a county," where pony-fairs 

 are still given out by the clerk in the porch on Sundays, has 

 some very Aztecs of sheep about Cwym-dau-ddwr, or "the 

 dingle of the two rivers," Wye and Elan, near the church of 

 St. Bridget. Their range of hills, with hardly a hut for shelter, 

 extends for 20 miles by the course of the Wye, along the upper 

 part of the county, which in Scottish phrase "marches" with 

 JNI on tgomery shire, and "the sweet shire of Cardigan." Rhavader 

 is the little town of the hills 20 miles from Radnor, and about 

 six more from Kington. The flocks seldom number above 400 

 ewes ; ram selecting is a refinement not much cultivated ; and 

 the gimmers generally " chance it " with the old ewes. Light 

 scrags and big bellies are among their attributes ; their sharp or 

 " keen noses " are nearly as white as their faces, and their bleat 

 is as meek as a kid's. Storms and hard fare make sad havoc 

 among the lambs, both in preventing doublets, and starving 

 nearly a fourth of the singles which do come. Foxes have also 

 a goodly portion, and even the ravens and hooded crows will 

 make a sally, drive off the dam, and when they have picked out 

 the lambs' tongues and eyes, they devote their best energies to 

 the flanks. Still, with all their disadvantages of pasture and in- 

 breeding, "the capon-thighed ones," as the jobbers call the 

 Upper Radnorshiies, swell out nicely after four years old, when 

 they have left their hills for rich lowland grass. 



A sheep-washing day on the Wye is a very picturesque and 

 ■primitive matter. The flock-masters and their men fling them 

 off a rock, and on they go, through stream and eddy, from hole 

 to hole and stone to stone, till they reach some sure landing- 

 place below. There is also quite a muster from the sheep- 

 iarms with scissors, shears, and pitch-pot on shearing and lamb- 

 marking days. The Lord of the Manor's paddock is generally 

 pretty full of estrays, which have a withy round their necks, in 

 token of errantry ; and it is each shepherd's duty to go there 

 periodically and claim his sheep by their marks on payment of 



