200 KALM S ENGLAND. 



in great numbers, which originated partly in this, that 

 they get to sell all the more wool, partly also because 

 there is no nation which eats so much meat as the 

 Englishmen, and among the same, their mutton or Far 

 stek is not to be despised, and therefore the farmer has 

 a considerable profit, who is the owner of a large number 

 of sheep, not to mention their other uses. Nearly all 

 their sheep were white. There was scarcely one in a 

 hundred that was black or brown or any other colour. 

 They commonly had either [T. I. p. 201] on the back, 

 the nape of the neck, the head, or elsewhere, wool 

 coloured red in one pattern or another, with ruddle, 

 rod-krita, and water mixed, by which colouring every 

 owner knew his own again. The greater number of them 

 had two horns. Every farmer had commonly one sheep 

 which carried a little bell, skalla. The little lambs had 

 a very long tail which reached nearly to the ground, but 

 as soon as they were nearly six months old half the tail 

 was cut off, which was said to be done partly because 

 the sheep looked better, partly and principally because a 

 great deal of dirt fastens on to the long tail. The 

 English sheep were far from shy, at least nowhere near so 

 much so as our Swedish. They went day and night 

 out on the pastures under the open sky, without having 

 any house or roof to go under. 



In one single place I saw that a boy went with them 

 to pasture, but commonly and almost everywhere they 

 were left without a shepherd, vall-hjon, entirely by 

 themselves. At home at the farms they had in some 

 places small Skeelings, skjul, built of short posts and 

 the roof of the skeel of straw, under which the sheep 

 could go when it rained, or was bad weather. Some had 

 also another outhouse, into which the shepherd, Fara 

 herden, in such a case, and in some places every evening, 

 drove in the sheep. Some farmers had in the middle of 



