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  At this point The Shepherd thought perhaps the drink she had consumed at the party was playing tricks on her. She tiptoed across the house to her boss’s bedroom and peered in to find her there safely fast asleep. So back into the kitchen she went, closed and latched the cellar door and turned off its light. Once again she crossed the dining room towards the latched door to the narrow steep stairs and her bedroom, but when she was halfway across the room, she heard the cellar door open again, but this time the kitchen light went on. The Shepherd beat a hasty retreat across the dining room to the door of the narrow steep stairs and up to the safety of her bedroom. She opened the latched door to the staircase, leapt through it, closing it hastily behind her and scurried up the stairs. She was hardly halfway up the stairs when the two doors at the foot of the stairs opened then closed, opened then closed, then began to latch and unlatch as if someone was on the other side of each door and opening and closing them rapidly. Every hair on her body stood on end, she told me, like a caricature Hallowe’en black cat. The Shepherd rushed up the remaining stairs, rounded the corner, leapt into bed, switched on the bedside light and stayed awake with goggle-eyed dread and fear all night. The next morning when The Shepherd smelled coffee and could hear her boss cooking the routine breakfast hamburger, she crept downstairs with a bit less trepidation. Before she could ask anything, her boss thanked her for locking up and turning off all the lights. ‘But … but … but …’ The Shepherd stumbled over the telling of her tale, recounting the opening and closing doors and the lights switching on and off by themselves. ‘Oh, that must have been Jesse Merwin playing a trick on you,’ her boss laughed. ‘Not to worry, he is very friendly and means no harm.’ Needless to say, The Shepherd made sure she was exhausted every night after that so she could go to sleep with her lights on. What a scaredy-cat she was!

  Her next favourite tale is one she calls Deliverance. I have never seen the film, but she tells me about a time when she lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia riding horses long distances. Her friend at the time had what he called ‘endurance horses’ and they both worked to get them in shape to ride great distances. An able horsewoman, The Shepherd loved these long rides up into the Appalachian Mountains. If the dogs they rode with didn’t stir far off the trails, she often saw lots of wildlife, flocks of wild turkey, deer, bobcats and brown bears.

  On this particular day, they were out riding at the height of the bow-and-arrow hunting season in Virginia. This comes before the rifle-shooting season and enables local people to continue hunting for food such as wild turkeys, deer and bears, but on a more sustainable footing.

  They had been riding for some hours with the dogs trotting a short distance ahead of them. Suddenly one dog leapt sideways, barking with fright, surprise and anger. At the same time The Shepherd’s horse reared and spun, spooked. Not ten feet in front of them on the upper side of the trail’s edge stood a fully camouflaged man, his face painted, and armed with a bow and arrow. Further along, but down the steep slope, was a second man camouflaged from head to foot but armed with a hunting rifle, which this early in the hunting season was illegal. Sensibly, The Shepherd and her companion rode on as quietly and quickly as possible down the mountain, doubling back onto a different route to head home. A few miles further on, they came to a mountain stream that tumbled down between rocky outcrops. As they carefully crossed the rocky mountain stream, they heard a noise. They looked up to see the two well-armed men standing upstream on boulders looking down on them as their horses picked their way across the stream, their weapons trained on the two riders. Outflanked and outarmed, The Shepherd and her companion rode away as quickly as they could. They had angered the hunters by disturbing their stalking of whatever quarry they had been pursuing.

  It makes me grateful for my small plot of land by the banks of the River Nore. There are no men armed with bows and arrows or big cougars calling in these green fields, just the baa of the chocolate-coloured sheep, birds singing and occasional fox barks, with the blue of the Blackstairs Mountains visible in the distance.

  11

  Christmas at Black Sheep Farm

  As December deepens, the pinnacle of shorter days and longer nights approaches. The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, lands on the twenty-first day of December. By my sheep-leg-count calculation, that’s about five and one quarter of one sheep.

  Most years, after our wintry lunch of hot soup or stew, The Shepherd and I walk out with our canine crew to find and select a small branch of holly heavy with bright red berries and also a small oak tree branch with healthy buds on it for the expedition to celebrate the winter solstice. When we are out picking these branches, Pepper gets very excited and his back legs start to vibrate in anticipation, as he knows they will soon be off on an adventure. However, Pepper hardly ever barks, reserving his deep, low ‘woof’ for badgers, foxes and the occasional stranger who calls in at the farm. He is intelligent enough to know the difference between the noises car engines make, and when it’s The Shepherd’s, he doesn’t make a sound.

  Holly and oak represent folklore and mythology of the battle between the Holly and Oak kings for supremacy, as the year wheels slowly from season to season. One monarch rules the waxing year, the other the waning year. Winter and summer solstices have critical importance as longest night and longest day respectively. The battle between the kings happens each year during the equinox of equal day and night as the seasons turn. At the peak of extremely long summer light (the longest day), or at the very depth of dark winter (the shortest day), one king is strongest.

  The Holly King rules at the height of his power during the winter solstice before longer days commence with more light and rebirth of the shining sun that gives life to the Earth. With the warmth of spring, the Oak King’s sap begins to flow, his buds burst, leaves unfurl and flowers appear. With summer solstice, the King Oak tree rules supreme as he has spread his strong green leaves widely and begins to ripen his acorn fruit. Come the summer equinox in June, the Oak King remains dominant. Hints of coming winter appear in September when the Oak King’s leaves begin to curl a bit with brown edges as he prepares to shed his mighty crown of leaves and drop acorns at his feet. Once again the Holly King assumes the ruling mantle as his spiky green leaves shine brightly in the September sun and his green berries start to swell and slowly turn to red.

  On the day of the winter solstice The Shepherd gathers together an assortment of human friends as well as Pepper, who has always loved adventures off the farm. Personally, I prefurrr to stay on the farm. After a long drive up narrow winding country roads, they park and gather at the foot of a hill above the village of Tullaghought. They start to hike up a long, tortuous, muddy and stony boreen (which is what narrow country roads are called in this part of the world), with high hedges on either side, until they reach a mesh-covered gate. They climb over the gate and heft Pepper over as it is usually locked. Next, they have to walk around a wide shallow pond that is sometimes frozen. If the ice is thick enough, humans throw stones that skip on it to make a funny thwock, thwock, thwack, sound. Pepper says it’s like skipping stones because of the way they jump across the ice. He enjoys the chase of these stones but is careful if the ice is too thin.

  As their uphill hike progresses, they pass through an old farmyard with tumbledown moss-covered ruins of stone buildings. After slogging through the muddy farmyard they push uphill and round a corner through a tree-shrouded lane sided by stone walls thick with moss and ferns. They persevere up a steeper part of the hill through a field and over the crest of the topmost ridge, where they arrive at the flat space of the Baunfree Passage Tomb.

  Baunfree is a stone circle on a small plateau with spectacular views of South Kilkenny, East Tipperary and Waterford. Recently, as planted woodlands have grown taller, you can no longer view the sea beyond Waterford. The group arrive just before sunset. The Shepherd places her small branch of berried holly and her fat-budded oak branch on top of one of the highest standing stones as a tribute
to the people who built this ancient monumental circle. Then she opens her thermos flask of homemade hot chocolate and pours everyone a steaming tin mug. Together they raise their mugs to toast the coming of the New Year when the sun starts to lengthen daylight. Pepper loves this expedition because when he is up on the hilltop he can stand, sniff the air and smell all the scents of what has happened that day wafting up from miles around. When he comes home to Black Sheep Farm, he tells me all about it and I can’t help but feel a dart of envy that The Shepherd doesn’t invite me to be part of this ritual.

  Pepper tells me that when darkness falls, they hike down by torchlight to their cars and drive to a village pub, where they warm themselves with hot port. Along the way they pass a house covered with every sort of Christmas light you can imagine. So they have savoured two very different Irish worlds: the beautiful ancient ruins where long-gone tribes once worshipped the return of the sun’s earliest lengthening of daylight contrast harshly with the black night pierced by blazing decorative modern electric lights of many colours.

  In other years, I believe, their winter solstice pilgrimage has taken them to the passage tomb of Knockroe, a Neolithic ceremonial location which nestles on a south-facing slope of Kilmacoliver Hill. The tomb’s westward view aligns its stones with midwinter’s setting sun, towards the mountain of Slievenamon in County Tipperary. If the winter weather is not too cloudy to block sunlight, as the sun sets it casts a beam between two decorated carved stones to the back of the passage tomb.

  This winter solar phenomenon is similar to those at Newgrange, Knowth and Loughcrew passage tombs. Newgrange is probably the best-known of these, as the mid-winter sun rises and pierces the depth of the tomb, but Knockroe is one of the most decorated tombs outside the Boyne Valley and in recent years winter solstice crowds have greatly enlarged at Knockroe, so it has become much more difficult to see this wondrous sight on 21 December.

  Once, long ago, when The Shepherd was a small child, she tells me that she was taken to picnic on top of Newgrange with her grandfather, sister, a cousin and some of her grandfather’s friends. Archaeologists had begun to work on restoring this ancient monument site well before there were many visitors. Since the surrounding fields were filled with nettles and thistles, they had sat on top of the grass-covered Newgrange mound munching well-buttered bread covered with sliced red tomatoes picked fresh from Black Sheep Farm’s vegetable garden that morning.

  As they picnicked, several archaeologists sensed these visitors were quite interested in Newgrange and inquired if The Shepherd’s grandfather would like to climb down a ladder to see inside another ancient mound. He replied that he would like that very much indeed. The Shepherd scampered quickly after her grandfather and clambered down the ladder into the dark tomb chamber below. From the entrance hole above their heads the archaeologist shone his torchlight to illuminate some of the features.

  Most of the historical archaeological conversation sailed over The Young Shepherd’s head, but it was a memorable adventure. They climbed out and followed the archaeologist into a second tunnel, where they walked to the back of the inner passage to view a huge stone bowl that filled the excavated space.

  The archaeologist suggested to The Young Shepherd: ‘Go now and sit in that big bowl, for you will probably be the last child ever to have the pleasure of sitting in it. We are about to install bars across the entrance to the chamber to keep the bowl safe from vandals.’ The Shepherd remembers well that she sat with her skinny legs tucked beneath her thin body against the smooth cold carved stone of this huge ancient bowl and looked out the entrance passage towards the bright light of a summer’s day. This bowl had been placed in the tomb before the narrow passageway had been made as it was physically impossible to have put in the bowl after the passage had been built. So as a child, The Shepherd had sat in an ancient carved Stone Age bowl that was older than the pyramids of Egypt.

  Christmas-morning stars shine sharp and bright in a black, crisp, moonless sky. All is quiet as only a distant fox, a vixen in her three-day heat, screams her shrill call for a mate, and frost thickens its grasp on the fields’ grassy stems in the pre-dawn gloaming.

  Lambing time is when we are all in the sheep shed watching, waiting and anticipating the birth of our new season’s lambs. I have my full winter coat fluffed out as insulation against the cold, always on watch and keeping The Shepherd company. Ovenmitt, my Shepherd Cat apprentice, also appears and will sit on The Shepherd’s lap. Ovenmitt then climbs onto the back of a friendly ewe who has come to lie down near The Shepherd’s feet and unintentionally warm her toes. To survive the cold, The Shepherd sips a mug of tea clasped tightly to keep her hands warm and waits to see if she is needed. We are all watching a ewe who is about to lamb. All is quiet, only the rustle of straw as the lambing ewe circles and paws the ground in anticipation of her first lamb. Both Ovenmitt and I purr in the comfort of companionable company. The rest of the flock are all cosy in straw sleeping or methodically quietly chewing their cuds. Time continues gently to weave its way through these calm moments of reflection. It helps to strengthen a pattern woven into the fabric that is our life; it enables us to absorb frenetic events that occur throughout one’s lifetime.

  Leading up to Christmas, The Shepherd always worries about there not being enough eggs for eggnog. During the winter months, egg-makers always lay fewer eggs with cold weather’s much-shorter hours of daylight. They enter a rest period or egg-laying hibernation. So The Shepherd collects those few eggs and guards them jealously for a festive Christmas morning when her nearby cousins and house guests gather for homemade eggnog.

  When the house fills with friends and relations a few days before Christmas, there is usually a kitchen party making Christmas tree decorations. Coloured paper chains have been a longstanding tradition in the house, with popcorn and cranberry chains added to the decor in more recent years.

  We all go into the fields and walk along the hedgerows to collect holly and ivy to decorate the house. The Shepherd and I usually watch through the autumnal months to ascertain where holly berries are thickest. We only hope hungry birds don’t eat them before Christmas decoration time.

  Christmas time also brings back sad memories for The Shepherd as her granny died three days before Christmas 1996. Then, it was the first time The Shepherd had returned to Ireland after her bout with tropical illness. She returned with her mother and father, even though she had to be moved through airports in a wheelchair as she was still very weak from her three-year illness.

  As a passenger during the dawn-dark drive from Dublin Airport through the Irish winter countryside, The Shepherd tried to sit erect in the car to watch the winter-sleeping farmland roll past her window, but she became too exhausted. She lay flat in the back seat so she could only smell the countryside as they travelled south to County Kilkenny. She detected the distinctive odours of farming, especially the molasses-sweetened, fermented aroma of silage as farmers fed their sheep and cattle in the early-morning light. As they drew closer to home, they passed through villages with people awakening and lighting their fires. The pleasant pungent smell of turf smoke seeped through the car’s closed windows, another sensory welcome back to Ireland for The Shepherd after her long absence in New York and then in London and in the Far East, before she returned to her parents’ home in Virginia to recuperate. To The Shepherd, they were the smells of home.

  The next day, refreshed from her long sleep, The Shepherd and her father drove to the hospital to visit her granny. She lay there in her hospital bed, eyes closed, breathing easily, seemingly in comfort of a restful sleep. The Shepherd asked a nurse if her granny could wake up or if she would know that The Shepherd was there. The nurse replied that the last thing to go at this stage was hearing so that she should talk to her granny and let her know she was there. The Shepherd sat in a chair next to her bed and reached over to take her hand, which lay warm across her crisp white hospital sheets. She held her granny’s hand and sat quietly for a little while just holding
her hand, allowing a lifetime of memories to surge through her mind.

  The last time The Shepherd had seen her granny had been three years earlier when she had been brought home to Black Sheep Farm still very ill, as a stopover on her journey from London back to her parents’ home in the USA. Her granny, despite her overwhelmingly painful arthritic knees and hips, struggled upstairs every day to visit The Shepherd in her bedroom. The Shepherd lay in that bed for a month, listening to house life and distant farm noises. Wind and rain beat upon the bedroom window, dogs barked and far-off cows lowed as they anticipated their feed. She heard cawing crows leave their roosts in the trees beside the house each morning as they announced to the world they had departed their treetop bedchambers with loud caustic cackling. Then, on still days, when no wind or rain rattled the old glass window sashes, she could hear them return to their roost in a flurry of flapping wings and loud cackling as they gossiped before settling down for the night.

  She wished she had enough strength to go downstairs and sit in the room by the log fire with her granny but the grip of her illness kept her immobile, so in the bed she stayed. Her ma carried logs and turf bricks upstairs and lit and tended the fire in her bedroom, but her company was her own for many hours each day.

  As her recollections progressed, The Shepherd began to speak to her granny, who lay so still in her hospital bed. As The Shepherd sat there, her father moved off to discuss her granny’s illness with the doctors who were looking after her. Granny was a religious sort, who loved classical music and singing hymns in church. While The Shepherd rarely attended church, she had memorised a few hymns and spirituals. She chose to sing an old African-American spiritual. She recalled that her granny had often mentioned how others had crossed over Jordan. She hummed an introduction at first and then sang low and soft as she leaned in towards her granny’s ear so that only she could hear the lyrics and so as not to perturb nurses, doctors or other patients in other rooms on the hospital floor.