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Updated: May 1, 2025
The children, of which there must have been over a dozen, were of the usual cotton-head species found in all Northern countries, and wore any thing apparently they could get, from the cast-off rags of their parents to sheepskins and raw hide. Nothing could surpass the friendly interest of the old shepherd.
How full of the odor of a dead age the room now seemed to be! The roof was opened through the rude timbers to the whitened thatch. Sheepskins were scattered about the black oaken floor. Ralph walked to the chimney-breast, and stood on one of the skins as he leaned on the rannel-tree shelf. How still and cheerless it all was!
At last he could bear it no longer: his head burned, and his brain seemed whirling round; at a bound he leaped out of bed quite noiselessly, slid into his sheepskins, and stole out as he had done the night before, hardly knowing what he did. Poor Katte was mourning in the wooden shed with the other sheep, and the wail of her sorrow sounded sadly across the loud roar of the rushing river.
The walls were formed of rough, unpolished logs, and upon them, as against an unfinished background, the firelight threw reddish shadows of the old woman and the child. Overhead, from the uncovered rafters, hung several tattered sheepskins, and around the great fireplace there was a fringe of dead snakes and lizards, long since as dry as dust.
Don Quixote, who desired nothing better, rose and ordered Sancho to saddle and pannel at once, which he did with all despatch, and with the same they all set out forthwith. They had not gone a quarter of a league when at the meeting of two paths they saw coming towards them some six shepherds dressed in black sheepskins and with their heads crowned with garlands of cypress and bitter oleander.
Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.
For four generations they dwelt in cabins, wore sheepskins and goatskins, wandered about exploring rivers and forests and mines, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, because of their love of liberty, and for the slave's sake were slain with the sword of whom this generation is not worthy.
From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails.
It was drawn by an exceedingly lean, gray horse; and a short, fat man, with a broad, florid face, beaming with good nature, was mounted upon a high seat, made of a bundle of sheepskins. He was squint eyed, spacious mouthed, and had a nose that was flat to the end, which turned up in a short pug.
Splendid Negroes with bare throats like columns of black marble sang strange, chanting songs as they strode along. White-clad Arabs whose green turbans told that they had been to Mecca, walked beside their young wives' camels. Withered crones in yellow smocks trudged after the procession, driving donkeys weighed down with sheepskins full of oil.
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