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Then what a pleasure it was, when evening came, to blow my horn and summon my herd for the homeward journey! To see how they came with round bellies and full udders, and hear them bleating so cheerfully as they made for home! How proud I was when father praised me for keeping them so well! Then we would begin the milking, in the open air if the weather was good. Each one wanted to be first at the pail and be rid of her heavy burden of milk, and gratefully licked him who thus relieved her.

17. And its troubles and vexations:

Not that the herdboy's life was nothing but pleasure, upon my word, no! There is plenty of hardship in it. For me the most grievous was leaving my warm bed so early in the morning, marching out half-naked and barefoot into the cold open air, and there might be an iron-hard frost, or a thick fog hanging over the mountains. When the fog rose so high that I and my flock, climbing the slopes, could not win through and reach sunlight, then I wished it to Hell and Egypt, and hurried as best I could down to some little valley away from this darkness. But if I gained the victory and reached the sunlight and the bright sky above me, with the great ocean of fog beneath my feet, and here and there a mountain peak rising through it like an island, how proud and joyful I was! Then I would not leave the mountain all day, and my eyes could never gaze enough at the sunbeams playing over this ocean, and the misty waves tumbling upon it in the strangest forms, until towards evening they threatened to overwhelm me once more. Then I wished for Jacob's ladder [Genesis 28, v 12], but in vain, it was time for me to go. I began to feel sad and all things took on my mood. Solitary birds flew silently and menacingly overhead, and the great flies hummed about my ears in such a melancholy fashion that it made me weep. And I would be chilled nearly as much as in the morning, and my feet would pain me, though they were as hard as sole-leather.

For most of the time, too, I had cuts and bruises on one or other of my limbs, and when one injury healed I lost no time in causing myself another, perhaps by jumping onto a sharp stone, or losing a nail or a piece of skin from a toe, or cutting my fingers with my tools. Only seldom could I bind up these injuries, yet most of them were soon gone. Besides this the goats, as I said before, caused me much vexation at first, when they would not obey me, because I did not yet know how to control them properly. And moreover, my father whipped me many a time, if I did not herd them where he had directed me, but went wherever I pleased, and the goats did not yield as much as they should have done, or I had to tell him that I had lost one of them.

A goat-boy also has much to endure from other people. Who can keep a flock of goats under such restraint that they do not peep into a neighbour's field or pasture? Who can lead so many greedy animals among corn and oat-fields, between turnip and cabbage-patches, without any one snatching a mouthful? Then there would be cursing and lamenting: "You idle beggar! You little gallows-bird!" - such was my usual appellation. They sprang upon me with axes, whips or fence-stakes, one man once even with a scythe, swearing that he would cut a leg off my body. But I was light enough on my feet and none of them ever touched me. The other culprits, the goats, were often caught and put under arrest, then my father had to go and release them. If he judged it to be my fault, I got a beating. Certain of our neighbours had a particular dislike of me and brought down many a stroke upon my back. Then indeed I would think: Just wait, you, until I grow to your size, and I'll give your shoulders a licking. But one forgets such things, and that's as well. Yet there is truth in the old proverb: "He who a man of sense would be, no goat nor pigeon-keeper he". - So in short there are inconveniences and plenty of others in the herdboy's life. But bad days were richly compensated for by good ones, and then not even a king could be happier.

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