Old Jock the Shepherd of the Past

Old Jock, the Shepherd, that’s what everybody called him. He was born a long time ago in the year of 1880. He was born in a croft farm in the bonny Highlands of Scotland. His father was a shepherd all through the eighteen-hundreds. In those distant bygone years everything was done by horse-drawn and all these old-fashioned ways of how things were done was all passed on to Old Jock from his father. I am Douglas Cox, better known as Countryboy. During the decade of the 1970s I got to know Old Jock very well, very well indeed. During that whole decade he would tell me his whole lifetime of stories. How people would travel by stagecoaches, but more to the point, how he worked his croft farm with horse-drawn machinery and how he shepherded his vast flock of several thousand sheep. I might add, well into his nineties. As I write this story in the year of 2012 Old Jock is now dead, but he dearly wanted me to write about his shepherding lifetime. He told me his story in Scottish broken tongue; I will tell you his story in English broken tongue. And what a terrific knowledgeable story Old Jock did tell!