5 5 Wild Life in a Southern County 



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 inter- 

 fere 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 enough. 

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

 account of a wall or enclosure, will they ever rush into a 

 pond. If a sheep gets into a brook and cannot get out — 

 his narrow feet sink deep into the mud — should he not be 

 speedily relieved he will die, even though his head be above 

 water, from chill and fright. Cattle, on the other hand, 

 love to stand in water on a warm day. 



In rubbing together and struggling with the shepherds 

 and their assistants a good deal of wool is torn from the 

 sheep and floats down the current. This is caught by a 



