WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 77 



it cannot be called road trampled into innumerable 

 small holes by the feet of flocks of sheep, driven down 

 here from the hills for the periodical washing. At 

 that time the roads are full of sheep day after day, 

 all tending in the same direction ; and the little way- 

 side inns, and those of the village which closely adjoins 

 the washpool, find a sudden increase of custom from 

 the shepherds. There is no written law regulating 

 the washing, but custom has fixed it as firmly as an 

 Act of Parliament : each shepherd knows his day, 

 and takes his turn, and no one attempts to interfere 

 with the monopoly of the men who throw the sheep 

 in. The right of wash here is upheld as sternly as if 

 it were a bulwark of the Constitution. 



Sometimes a landowner or a farmer, anxious to 

 make improvements, tries to enclose the approach or to 

 utilize the water in fertilizing meadows, or in one way or 

 another to introduce an innovation. He thinks per- 

 haps that education, the spread of modern ideas, and 

 the fact that labourers travel nowadays, have weak- 

 ened the influence of tradition. He finds himself 

 entirely mistaken : the men assemble and throw down 

 the fence, or fill up the new channel that has been dug ; 

 and the general sympathy of the parish being with 

 them and the interest of the sheep-farmers behind 

 them to back them up, they always carry the day, 

 and old custom rules supreme. 



The sheep greatly dislike water. The difficulty is 

 to get them in ; after the dip they get out fast enough. 

 Only if driven by a strange dog, and unable to escape 



