Welsh Sheep. 423 



Bridget. The range of hills, with hardly a hut for 

 shelter, extends for twenty miles by the course of the 

 Wye, along the upper part of the country, which in 

 Scottish phrase " marches " with Montgomeryshire, 

 and " the sweet shire of Cardigan." Rhayader is the 

 little town of the hills twenty miles from Radnor and 

 about six more from Kingston. 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 disadvan- 

 tages of pasture and inbreeding, "the capon-thighed 

 ones," as the jobbers call the Upper Radnorshires, 

 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 pic- 

 turesque 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-farms with 

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

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

 generally full of estrays, which have a withy round 

 their necks, in token of errantry ; and it is each shep- 

 herd's duty to go there periodically and claim his 

 sheep by their marks on payment of so much a week 

 for their food. The wethers are generally kept up to 

 five years old, and are then sent to Welshpool, and 



