Page:The English Peasant.djvu/228

 The shepherds' houses are built, as a rule, in the glens by the side of a burn. In the blinding mists which suddenly occur a shepherd will sometimes lose his way, and getting on the wrong side of the hill, wander far from his home into some distant valley. Directly he is conscious of having lost himself, he descends the side of the hill until he comes to a watercourse; this soon leads him to a brook, the brook joins a burn, and on the burn he knows erelong he will come to friendly cot, where he can rest and learn his whereabouts.

In the interesting blue-books quoted at the commencement of this article, we have some surprising proofs given of the determination of these shepherds to obtain instruction for themselves and their children.

Anthony Dagg, a shepherd of Linbriggs, on the Cheviots, the father of eleven children, about twenty years ago hired a schoolmaster at his own expense. After a year or two he took his master and two other shepherds into partnership. The school is now attended by thirty-one children, and there is not at the present time a person in the district who cannot read and write. The schoolmaster moves from house to house among his four employers, receiving board and lodging during fourteen days for each scholar.

Near Bellingham a few shepherds on the hills keep a schoolmaster between them, and lately commissioned their schoolmaster to procure for them Virgil, Horace, and Cæsar.

In the winter-time the parents will send the bigger boys into lodgings at Wooler, that they may have further advantages in the way of education. In the school belonging to the English Presbyterians the master speaks of having two sons of shepherds, one learning Latin, the other French and Euclid.

Perhaps the secret of this mental energy lies in the deep religiousness which characterises them as a class.

"It is almost impossible that the shepherd can be other than a religious character, being so much conversant with the Almighty in His works, in all the goings on of Nature, and in His control of the otherwise resistless elements. He feels himself a dependent being, morning and evening, on the great Ruler of the Universe; he holds converse with Him in the cloud and the storm, on the