Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith Read Free Book Online

went into the kitchen when no one was there, where it had intentionally or unintentionally more than once knocked over pails of milk and stood in setting bowls of cream. On stormy days when the door was firmly shut it was in the habit of planting itself firmly in the doorway ready to butt its way inside the moment it saw its chance and though strong men found it easy enough to eject an unwanted sheep from their path, a woman, encumbered as she so frequently was with a bowl or pail or both, found wrestling against the wind to open the door enough of a hazard without the added menace of attack by a hard-horned, determined and wet-fleeced sheep.
    The crofter had tried tethering the sheep, but good grass had to be reserved for hay and poor land was either too stony or too boggy for a stake to hold against the persistent straining of an animal which with the perverseness of its kind was constantly striving to feed beyond the circle of the restraining rope. It was forever breaking free, invading near-by crofts and eventually becoming the cause of so many acrimonious exchanges that there was united insistence on its disposal.
    The only alternative to slaughtering was for it to be taken and ‘lost’ among the flocks of hill sheep and, yielding to the entreaties of his children, this the crofter had attempted to do. My action in ‘rescuing’ the sheep had, alas, only hastened its journey to the butcher.
    Mindful of Hamish’s advice and determined not to become anthropomorphic about my patient, I gave him no pet name save ‘Lamb’, which only when I forgot my resolves was gentled into ‘Lammy’. When he had grown sturdy and taken to following at my heels like a faithful dog I tried to feel no pleasure and when, with the strong encouragement of my neighbours, I felt the time had come for him to join the sheep on the hill I carried out my resolution of returning him unquestioningly to the shepherd. But I confess I hated doing it. One cannot succour any ailing young thing; cradle its little body in one’s aproned lap; feel the rhythmic pull of its sucking on the feeding bottle; watch the ecstatic glazing of its eyes as the warm milk reaches its stomach; observe with pride its growth from weakness to frisky strength, and yet still remain completely detached.
    â€˜You’ll be well rid of him,’ the shepherd observed, as he pushed Lammie into a small enclosure with two other lambs which his wife had hand-reared and which were also now due to join the hill flocks.
    I turned to the shepherd’s wife. ‘How do you feel about letting them go after you’ve reared them?’ I asked.
    She smiled obliquely. ‘When he first brings them home I’m as soft over them as I’d be over a bairn,’ she admitted. ‘But when they’re grown they’re just sheep an’ I’m the best pleased of everyone when they’re back on the hill where they rightly belong.’
    I looked at her closely, wondering if she was hiding her true feelings and seeing my serious expression she chuckled. ‘Come away in an’ we’ll have a strupak to celebrate gettin’ rid of them,’ she said.
    I had crossed the strath now and was approaching the spot where Tearlaich had reported seeing Bonny and the bull and pausing beside a tumble of rocks from which an isolated young rowan tree reared itself like a flag, I scanned the moors for a glimpse of them. It was habit now when my wanderings brought me this way to pause beside the young rowan tree. When I had first come to Bruach to spend what was intended to be a month or two’s holiday I had on my very first exploration of the moors discovered the rowan tree; a struggling seedling with its roots clamped between two bald boulders where there was no visible trace of soil. Intrigued as to how it was possible for the seed to have germinated let alone grown under such conditions, I began to visit it regularly and observe its