Mus Penfold -- and Billy

Mus Penfold -- and Billy by E.V. Lucas

Mus Penfold and Billy is a personal essay by E. V. Lucas reflecting on shepherds, sheep, and a pet lamb. The narrator opens by observing that lending one's sheep-dog to a shepherd is a mistake, since the shepherd will inevitably win the dog's loyalty away from its owner through his quiet cleverness. The narrator describes his own shepherd, a man whose family has tended the same farm for generations, who is sixty-six, has never had a cold, always carries his crook along with a green umbrella and an old military cloak in wet weather, still wears a smock, cannot read or write, and has never visited London though he knows Brighton station. The narrator praises the shepherd's natural eloquence, sly humour, and sharp observation despite his illiteracy, noting his limited but vivid vocabulary ("tidy," "middling," "out-an'-out"), and recounts his terse reply to the vicar that he is not "pestered by parsons." The shepherd recalls vanished customs: the days when wheatears were trapped and sold to Brighton poulterers, and the smuggling era, when his grandmother at Lullington concealed smugglers' tubs under her beehive skeps. Both the shepherd and a fisherman the narrator knows agree that smuggling was ended less by the coastguard than by informers, and the shepherd tells of a neighbour who "did more work at night than ever he did by day." The shepherd also once drove lambs to traditional Sussex sheep fairs like Lindfield and the "Bat and Ball" at Chiddingly, but now the farmer sends them to auction in town instead, a change the shepherd attributes to a boy too absorbed in "book-learning." The narrator then turns to the 1911 lambing season, during which the shepherd, Mus Penfold, labored anxiously through bad weather, acting as doctor, midwife, and nurse to the flock. The narrator visited daily, watching Penfold tend newborn lambs, including two tiny twins he feared would die. Despite losses from cold winds, about sixty lambs survived. The narrator describes how Penfold used the skin of a dead lamb to disguise a motherless lamb so a bereaved ewe would accept it as her own, a trick that usually succeeded, though some ewes had to be tied to prevent them from rejecting or butting away their lambs. This was also the only season the narrator saw the shepherd actually use his crook as a tool, dragging newborn lambs to the pens. The narrator then digresses on the pictorial quality of sheep, discussing painters who have depicted them well or poorly: Blake, Charles Jacque, Sidney Cooper, Edward Calvert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet, along with a small drawing by Robert Hills and the Bassano family's sheep paintings in Vienna. He praises Millet's and Mauve's treatment of sheep as part of life and nature respectively, and expresses relief that no post-impressionist sheep paintings existed at the Grafton Galleries. Finally, the narrator contrasts the timid, distrustful nature of ordinary sheep with Billy, a bold, mischievous pet lamb raised by hand in a Midlands river valley. Billy fears nothing, rests in the middle of paths, butts and chases children and hens, explores gardens, and eagerly drinks milk from an old oil can, still nosing at strangers' knees for food even when full. The narrator calls him more full of character than any other animal he has seen, unlike both ordinary timid sheep and the sentimental pet lamb of Wordsworth's poem, and muses that hand-rearing all lambs this way would make for a merrier England. He notes, however, that he has not suggested this to Mus Penfold, who, though humorous, is no Radical and would find the idea treasonable.

By E.V. Lucas · First published 1918 · Genre: Personal Essay, Pastoral Literature, Animal Stories · 2,932 words

First lines

Every man, however unobservant or incapable of correlating experiences, must learn something in the course of his life. Some little thing. Circumstances will force it into his intelligence. And a truth that has just been forced into mine is this -- that it is a foolish thing to lend your sheep-dog to a shepherd, for the simple reason that the shepherd will at once insidiously and surely make it his own. You may reclaim it in the evening, fondle it, call it "Good old Bob, then! " receive its half-hearted caresses, and feed it; but it will be yours no longer. That is to say, its soul will be yours no longer, however you may cherish the husk. The cause is twofold -- first, that the sheep-dog is a noble animal, who prefers work to sloth and a master to an owner; and, secondly, that shepherds are clever men, hiding under a simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little guile.

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Mus Penfold -- and Billy is listed on Textopian as a short story by E.V. Lucas, dated 1918 CE.

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children's literature · animal characters · adventure · friendship · mouse protagonist · classic fiction · British literature · humorous · fantasy · anthropomorphic animals · coming of age · juvenile fiction

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