The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks Page A

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    It was clear from his stories that we were part of a tradition, that long pre-dated us, and would long exist after us. The stories left you feeling proud to be part of that tradition, but very aware that as individuals we were bound by duty to carry it on, bound to try and live by those values. His main lesson was above all to get along with people; don’t burn your bridges or they will stay down for a long time. Having the same families live and work alongside each other for many centuries created a unique kind of society with special values.
    In my grandfather’s world, a person’s life was not a thing of his own invention, a new thing on a blank slate. We are bound by our landscape. Shaped by it. Defined by it. Like all good grandparents my grandfather could only see the best in me, and that always made me stand a little taller.
    Fathers’ names are still interchangeable with those of the sons, and surnames with the names of the farms. The story about your family was something to be aware of, because a bad story could shame you for years.
    We are, I guess, all of us, built out of stories.
    I know his stories almost off by heart …
    He told stories of his grandfather on his mother’s side of the family, T. G. Holiday. From what I could gather, my granddad had worshipped and copied his grandfather much as I did mine. So even though I never met this man and he died long before I was born, there is a connection and continuity between us. My grandfather built himself out of stories about T. G. Holiday and I built myself out of stories of him.
    T. G. Holiday sits proudly on my bookshelf in a sepia photograph I have inherited. It must date from the 1890s or 1900s. The picture shows him standing in a field surrounded by bullocks, a hazel stick in hand and a large droving dog sitting loyally by his feet. Bowler hat. Muttonchop whiskers. He looks deep in thought and not that interested in having his photo taken. The cattle are each eating from their own wooden buckets or stone troughs. In my grandfather’s stories T. G. was a kind of mythical heroic character.
    T. G. was a tenant farmer on the Inglewood Estate. He bought Irish cattle and met them in the little harbour at Silloth with his men. He’d have wagons loaded with troughs for feeding them on the journey back to the farm. He also bought flocks of geese off those boats, and tarred and gritted their feet so they could be walked back to the farm. They walked these animals home, taking a couple of days or more, sleeping at night by the roadsides. He fattened the cattle and geese on his pastures and sold them in local markets when they were in peak condition and worth the most. Without anyone much noticing, he made money from his dealing, because during World War I he quietly accumulated lots of war bonds as an investment. Some time later he sold them for profit and filled two suitcases with money, which he kept at home for two years.
    Then one day he loaded his suitcases into his cart and went to an auction of three good farms. To the disbelief of everyone present, he bought all three farms and paid in cash. As he travelled home that day he passed a crowd on the roadside in Penrith, and realized they were selling a row of cottages with sitting tenants. Perhaps to finish off whatever point he was making that day, he bought the row of cottages with the cash left in the suitcases. He sold them to the individual tenants for a profit in the next few months.
    If you were a tenant farmer and wanted to make your mark on a small farming community, then you couldn’t do it much better than T. G. Holiday did on that day. He was thereafter someone of standing. He set each of his sons off on the bought farms, educated his daughters (including my great-grandmother Alice), and helped them get started with their own husbands. He is still known and spoken about with respect by older farming folk. His descendants in several families are still proud of