About Cheviot Sheep
February 1936
Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone.
As the car breasts the summit of the Carter Bar, after the long
pull up from Catcleugh, and begins to glide smoothly down the steep
descent to Jedburgh, the occupant suddenly becomes aware that he is
entering a new land. The hills, it is true, do not differ in
character from those be has just left behind, but instead of
closing in on him they are spread before him in an endless vista,
range upon range, rolling or conical, dark brown or green, showing
where heather or grass predominate. Hills, hills, nothing but
hills, this is Scotland, and surely by no other gate could the
entry be more impressive.
He may or may not know, but he is gazing over Teviotdale,
Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ettrickdale, Yarrow, and Tweeddale, for far in
the distant west the giant Laws of Peeblesshire close in the view
and leave to the imagination, what is true in fact, a vision of
more and still more hills. To left and right runs the long line of
the Cheviots, the traditional boundary between England and
Scotland, Carter Fell, Peel Fell, and Larriston Fells stretch
towards the Solway, while The Cheviot and Yeavering Bell lead the
eye to the low lands that border the North Sea. In few places in
the British Isles can we get such a sense of space or a greater
feeling of being alone with Nature. Only down in the wooded depths
by Jedburgh or in the rich lands of the Merse that bound our
northern horizon does there seem to be any evidence of human
habitation.
As we swing round the first bend of the zigzag descent the huge
bulk of The Cheviot comes more directly into our ken- this is the
hill, there are no mountains so-called in the Borderland, that for
the moment holds our interest, for on its broad slopes have grazed
from time immemorial a breed of sheep which bears its name. This is
the very home of the breed, and all the hills within our view, nay
many in the far Highlands and beyond the seas, are its by
conquest.
We have used the word immemorial, but we have no intention of
delving too deeply into the origin or evolution of the breed. It is
stated on several authorities to have been introduced into Scotland
about the year 1372, but our interest in it really awakens towards
the latter half of the eighteenth century.
At the beginning of that century agriculture in Scotland was in a
very backward state, methods were primitive to the verge of
barbarism, cultivators were poor, and to say that they were
unenterprising and showed the greatest aversion to new ideas is
possibly to understate the case; but owing to various reasons,
political, economic, and social, this state of affairs underwent a
complete transformation during the progress of the next hundred
years. The emergence from what was practically a crofting system to
one of large farms tenanted by men of some means, of wider vision
and more open to new ideas would naturally lead to an awakened
interest in sheep breeding, thus we find in the year 1760 attention
being turned to the improvement of the Long or White-faced sheep,
for by these two names the Cheviot sheep was then known.
The Cheviot is classed as a Mountain sheep, a name that is
self-explanatory, and distinguishes it from the lustrous or
long-woolled sheep, such as the Leicester, the Lincoln, or the
Border Leicester who graze on the lower and arable lands. It shares
the hills of Scotland with another Mountain breed, best known as
the Scotch Blackfaced. Both these breeds are said to have
originally come from the North of England, and have completely
ousted an older, if not primitive, sheep known as the
Tan-faced.
The Tan-faced are but a memory, though a trace of their blood may
linger in the stock of the White-faced invaders. The Blackfaced and
Cheviot now Unchallenged share the pasture of the Scottish hills
and mountains, and a long battle - if one may apply the word to
anything so peaceful and pastoral - has ended in a draw.
The Blackfaced were first in the field, and had penetrated far
into the Highlands while the Cheviots were still grazing only on
the hills of that name. In Ettrick Forest up till after the middle
of the eighteenth century the Blackfaced, variously known as the
Heath, Linton, Forest, or Short sheep, reigned supreme. It was
about 1760 that in the Borders the long controversy as to the
merits of the two breeds first arose. It is here perhaps necessary
to explain that in the production of wool the aims of the
manufacturer and the farmer are by no means identical. The
manufacturer has one constant wish, the production of a good
standardised wool that will suit his requirements either for
combing or for carding. He wishes the breeds to be kept separate,
so that in blending he knows where he is. Naturally, he wishes them
to be brought up to the best possible standard within themselves
and, even by a certain amount of crossing, to be improved.
The farmer, on the other hand, is torn by conflicting emotions, so
it is a wonder that, like Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, he does not
die of them. He has to consider in the first place the question of
profit. Wool may be cheap or dear, and according to that the
question of the manufacturer bulks in his view as of less or more
importance. A larger and heavier fleece may not mean more money. A
fine fleece may mean more delicate sheep and the consequent risk of
loss by death in a hard winter. He has also to consider the
butcher, and if the price of mutton is high the importance of the
manufacturer recedes. Also he has to consider the market price of
the sheep itself. As none of these values are constant he has
difficult decisions to make, and being human he does not always
make the right one.
The Blackfaced fleece is coarse, long, and open. It contains a
considerable proportion of kemp or short dead hairs, due to the
poverty of the feeding on much of the mountain land. The wool is
only fit for carpet yarns, or, when not too coarse, for the rougher
sort of homespun cloths. The mutton, on the other hand, is very
fine.
The Cheviot fleece is relatively much shorter and finer, it is
crimpy, clean, and dense, and the finest is almost free from kemp.
The bulk sort is very regular and eminently suitable for Scotch
Tweeds, in the production of which it has played a great and
distinguished part. The mutton is also very good.
Another element enters into the controversy and the hill farmer's
calculations, an important one in our climate of widely varying
winters, that is the relative hardiness of the two breeds. Here
also opinions are divided, and while it is generally conceded that
the Blackfaced will do better on extreme altitudes, the Cheviot
will go into the mossy and marshy hollow where the other breed will
not follow. To generalise, the former will do relatively better on
heather and the latter on grass. The Cheviot, let it be said to its
eternal credit, is a contented sheep - that is, it will readily
adapt itself to circumstances, and by keeping its mind easy will
thrive under adverse conditions - a lesson to humanity.
The peaceful penetration of the Southern Uplands of Scotland by
the Cheviot breed appears to have begun about the date we have
mentioned, 1760. The Scottish farmer gradually came to recognise
that here was a breed that was possibly as hardy as his Heath
sheep, and probably a great deal more profitable. In 1776 when the
battle was fully joined, we find that "Mr Thos. Scott on Carter
Fell, a mountain 1600 feet high, exchanged with Mr Walter Hog, in
Ettrick Forest, five white-faced for as many Blackfaced rams, but
had every reason to regret the experiment, which was far from being
the case with Mr Hog." Writing about 1790, Sir John Sinclair
remarks : "So much convinced are the farmers of Ettrick Forest, of
Tweeddale and Liddesdale of their superior excellence that they are
now converting their flocks as quickly as possible into the Cheviot
breed."
Ten years later the argument is still raging, for in the summer of
1801 we find Sir Walter (then Mr) Scott on a hunting expedition in
Ettrick Forest, not as the Scottish kings of old for deer or game,
but for Border ballads, met at Ramsaycleugh for a social evening
with the neighbouring farmers, including the Ettrick Shepherd
himself. The conversation, instead of running on the legendary
poetic lore of the district, which was uppermost at the time in the
Border Minstrel's mind, kept interminably to the everlasting
question of the Long and the Short sheep. Scott was frankly bored.
Perhaps the story is best told in Hogg's own words : "So at length
putting on his most serious calculating face he turned to Mr Walter
Brydon (his host) and said, 'I am rather at a loss regarding the
merits of this very important question. How long must a sheep
actually measure to come under the denomination of a long sheep?'
Mr Brydon, who, in the simplicity of his heart, neither perceived
the quiz nor the reproof, fell to answer with great sincerity,
"It's the woo, sir; it's the woo that mak's the difference, the
lang sheep hae the short woo and the short sheep hap the lang
thing, an these are just kind o' names we gie them, ye see.'
Laidlaw got up a great guffaw, on which Scott could not preserve
his face of strict calculation any longer, it went gradually awry,
and a hearty laugh followed." Hogg adds, "When I saw the very same
words repeated near the beginning of the 'Black Dwarf', how could I
be mistaken of the author? In "The Forest" at least the Long sheep
eventually won, for Lord Napier, in his evidence before the House
of Lords in 1828, says of Selkirkshire (Ettrick Forest), "... the
Blackfaced sheep have all been driven out of that part of the
country and substituted by Cheviots."
Captain Tom Elliot, a name of world-wide fame in Cheviot sheep
breeding, to whom we are indebted for a good deal of our
information, furnishes a simple explanation of the terms "Long" and
"Short". As a matter of fact, there is no difference in the actual
length of the sheep of the two breeds, but if a man is dressed in a
shaggy overcoat he will naturally look shorter than a man of the
same height wearing a close-fitting Chesterfield, so the Blackfaced
sheep with his coarse, open, wide-spreading coat looks shorter than
the Cheviot with his compact, close fleece.
We have referred to Sir John Sinclair, and he deserves honourable
mention, for not only is he the godfather of the Cheviot sheep, but
it was he who first introduced it to Caithness, the most northerly
County of Scotland, in the year 1791. From there it rapidly spread
to the neighbouring County of Sutherland, and has given us the
famous Sutherland wool, which has been used in producing many of
the choicest tweeds. Here again the conflict of ideas regarding the
relative merits of the breeds was renewed, but ended in a
substantial part of the county's acreage being absorbed by the
sheep from the lowland hills.
Patrick Sellar remarks that "... from 1805 to 1820, from a few
hundred Cheviot sheep that the County (Sutherland) then contained,
their number had so increased that 100,000 fleeces were sent
annually to the manufacturer." In 1837 we read further that "...
the contest is still carried on between these valuable breeds, but
decidedly in favour of the Cheviots." Evidently, like "The Gael",
the Blackfaced "... maintain'd unequal war." Experience has,
however, more or less solved the question, and it can now be said
that as a rule the flocks of one breed or the other occupy the
pastures that are best suited to their different natures.
An interesting echo of this migration from South to North is
referred to in the reminiscences of a Highland lady, writing of
Wester Ross in the late eighties of last century. We believe the
practice that she refers to still persists, but is gradually dying
out:-
"Talking of shepherds, it had never struck me how little
imagination they displayed in naming their collie dogs. In our part
the prevailing names were Tweed and Yarrow. Later I was told that
those were a survival of the time when Cheviot sheep were first
introduced into the North. The dogs, owned by the shepherds who
drove them up from the Borders, were usually called after their own
rivers, and so the names clung to our district. And it never, until
later, struck me as curious that all our shepherds, who, in those
days, could not speak a word of English, always delivered their
instruction in that language to their collies. "Come in to ma fut
here" was a usual expression. Again, I am told, this has been
handed down by the Border shepherds who, of course, addressed their
dogs in English - or rather Scots."
When Sir John Sinclair introduced these sheep to the far North
they had never been known by any other name than the Long or
White-faced sheep, names that had little meaning where other breeds
could be so described. He therefore christened them Cheviots, and
by that name they have been known ever since, a name that has
extended itself to a large class of fabrics woven in Scottish
mills. It may interest our English and Overseas readers to know
that the proper pronunciation is Cheviot as in cheese, and not
Cheviot as in level, or Sheviot as sometimes pronounced by our
friends across the Atlantic.
While the sheep were undergoing these introductions to pastures
new the question of the breed's improvement was also receiving
considerable attention. It is to be assumed that in the unsettled
state of Scotland during the preceding 400 years little heed would
be paid to this matter, although earlier than that, while Berwick
was still a Scottish seaport, there is a tradition that a Spanish
(Merino) strain was introduced. It is also possible that some of
the qualities that attracted the improvers of the late eighteenth
century may have been derived from this source. Berwick, in 1318
and the succeeding years, was the chief connecting link between
Scotland and the whole of the Continent of Europe, and its exports
of wool and imports of sheep were considerable.
In the Borders the idea seems to have been more towards the
strengthening of the frame and increasing the size of the carcass,
and with that object Lincoln or Leicester blood was introduced.
In the North the inclination tended towards a fine fleece, and
crosses with both Merino and Down sheep have been tried. The
Southdown sheep is derived in part from the Merino. Speaking
broadly, these two divergent ideas have accounted for some of the
differences still observable between the Sutherland and the Border
Cheviot. Both, if carried very far, were open to serious
objections. To increase the size of the sheep could only be done at
the expense of losing to a great extent those qualities for which
the wool was justly prized; a certain softness of constitution
would also manifest itself, and breeding for fineness alone would
endanger the stamina of the sheep in a climate which, though
generally mild, is subject to occasional winters of great severity,
and, especially on the high ground, to violent climatic changes.
Thus after many experiments the farmers seem to have accepted the
idea that the best improvement can be carried out by selective
breeding within the breed itself.
A curious difference in the habits of the Merino and Cheviot sheep
is worth noting. In a flock of Cheviots you find that the sheep
range apart in twos and threes, but the Merinos keep together like
a drove passing through the country. They form a sort of camp at
night, and nothing will induce them to lie abroad, as the shepherds
call sleeping on their own particular bit of ground, like other
mountain breeds. The second of these traits manifests itself in the
cross, but curiously enough not the first. So you find a Cheviot
sheep, with a strong strain of Merino in it, feeding apart during
the day, but returning at night to camp with its fellows. It can
easily be appreciated that on a large hirsel of several thousand
acres an individual sheep that has chosen the outlying ground has a
considerable journey to make both morning and evening.
But the breed has wandered far since their immemorial ancestors
first looked out from the lofty slopes of their native hill over
the wide Borderland and grey North Sea. In New Zealand, in Punta
Arenas, and the Falkland Islands, on lonelier mountains and by more
turbulent waters their descendants may now be found peacefully
grazing.
Wherever Scottish farmers have penetrated and wherever climatic
conditions suit, they have introduced this hardy breed, as honest
and as sound as the fleece they annually yield to the shearer and
as the cloth into which it is ultimately woven. A contented
sheep.