68 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
— it cannotbe 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 wayside 
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 utilise the water in fertilising meadows, or in one 
way or another to introduce an innovation. He thinks 
perhaps that education, the spread of modern ideas, 
and the fact that labourers travel nowadays, have 
weakened 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 
