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Through the summer months the peats required constant attention as they steadily accumulated in larger piles. The sheep had to be caaed or driven several times for dipping, for rooing, for marking the lambs and finally for weaning the lambs from their mothers and separating those to be sold or slaughtered from those to be "set on". On the day for caaing all the people of the district would assemble with their dogs. Each person knew his duties beforehand, some of them having to go to the very limits of the scattald perhaps five of six miles away. Gradually, with much shouting, barking of dogs and bleating of sheep they would converge on the cro, long lines of sheep merging into streams and finally coalescing into rivers of white, flecked with brown and grey, as they neared the pen where they would be guided through the entrance and the gate shut. The cro was far more than a place of work it was a meeting place where people could exchange news with neighbours on the other side of the hill. It was essential to roo the sheep at the correct time, when the old
wool was loosening and ready to be pulled off. But some animals shed part of
their fleece before caaing and it stuck in tufts to heather and barbed wire.
These hentilagets were considered public property, and many a poor old woman
with no sheep of her own gathered sufficient wool to make herself a set of warm
underclothes for the winter. |
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