19
fur singed off. From the service it renders, the family kindly protect the rat, and it runs about and gambols among them on the floor without the least uneasiness. It sometimes disappears for a week or ten days, and it is supposed that, in these intervals, it visits the stack-yard in its professional capacity.
Sheep.
A shepherd in Blackhouse bought a few sheep from another in Crawmel, about ten miles distant. In the spring following one of the ewes went back to her native place, and yeaned on a wild hill called Crawmel Craig. On a certain day, about the beginning of July following, the shepherd went and brought home his ewe and lamb—took the fleece from his ewe, and kept the lamb for one of his stock. The lamb lived and throve, became a hog and gimmer, and never offered to leave home; but when three years of age, and about to have her first lamb, she vanished; and the morning after, the Crawmel shepherd, in going his rounds, found her with a new-yeaned lamb on the very gair of the Crawmel Craig, where she was lambed herself, and then she came on with her's of her own accord; and this custom she continued annually with the greatest punctuality as long as she lived. At length her lambs, when they came of age, began the same practice, and the shepherd was obliged to dispose of the whole breed.
