The Waters of Edera

Waters of Edera, by Louise de la
Ramée, a.k.a. Ouida

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Title: The Waters of Edera
Author: Louise de la Ramée, a.k.a. Ouida
Release Date: September 15, 2004 [EBook #13459]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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WATERS OF EDERA ***

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THE WATERS OF EDERA

BY O U I D A

Author of "Moths," "Under Two Flags," "The Silver Christ," Etc.

London T. FISHER UNWIN Paternoster Square
1900

THE WATERS OF EDERA
I
It was a country of wide pastures, of moors covered with heath, of
rock-born streams and rivulets, of forest and hill and dale, sparsely
inhabited, with the sea to the eastward of it, unseen, and the mountains
everywhere visible always, and endlessly changing in aspect.
Herdsmen and shepherds wandered over it, and along its almost
disused roads pedlars and pack mules passed at times but rarely.
Minerals and marbles were under its turf, but none sought for them;
pools and lakes slept in it, undisturbed save by millions of water fowl
and their pursuers. The ruins of temples and palaces were overgrown
by its wild berries and wild flowers. The buffalo browsed where
emperors had feasted, and the bittern winged its slow flight over the
fields of forgotten battles.
It was the season when the flocks are brought through this lonely land,
coming from the plains to the hills. Many of them passed on their way
thus along the course of the Edera water. The shepherds, clothed in
goatskin, with the hair worn outward, bearded, brown, hirsute men,
looking like savage satyrs, the flocks they drove before them
travel-worn, lame, heart-broken, the lambs and kids bleating painfully.
They cannot keep up with the pace of the flock, and, when they fall
behind, the shepherds slit their throats, roast their bodies over an
evening fire, or bake them under its ashes, and eat them; if a town or
village be near, the little corpses are sold in it. Often a sheep dog or a
puppy drops down in the same way, footsore and worn out; then the

shepherds do not tarry, but leave the creatures to their fate, to die
slowly of thirst and hunger.
The good shepherd is a false phrase. No one is more brutal than a
shepherd. If he were not so he could not bear his life for a day.
All that he does is brutal. He stones the flock where it would tarry
against his will. He mutilates the males, and drags the females away
from their sucking babes. He shears their fleeces every spring,
unheeding how the raw skin drops blood. He drives the halting,
footsore, crippled animals on by force over flint and slate and parching
dust. Sometimes he makes them travel twenty miles a day.
For his pastime he sets the finest of his beasts to fight. This is the feast
day and holiday sport of all the shepherds; and they bet on it, until all
they have, which is but little, goes on the heads of the rams; and one
will wager his breeches, and another his skin jacket, and another his
comely wife, and the ram which is beaten, if he have any life left in him,
will be stabbed in the throat by his owner: for he is considered to have
disgraced the branca.
This Sunday and Saints' day sport was going on a piece of grass land in
the district known as the Vale of Edera.
On the turf, cleared of its heaths and ferns, there was a ring of men,
three of them shepherds, the rest peasants. In the midst of them were
the rams, two chosen beasts pitted against each other like two pugilists.
They advanced slowly at first, then more quickly, and yet more quickly,
till they met with a crash, their two foreheads, hard as though carven in
stone, coming in collision with a terrible force; then each, staggered by
the encounter, drew back, dizzy and bruised, to recoil, and take breath,
and gather fresh force, and so charge one on the other in successive
rounds until the weaker should succumb, and, mangled and senseless,
should arise no more.
One of the rams was old, and one was young; some of the shepherds
said that the old one was more wary and more experienced, and would
have the advantage; in strength and height they were nearly equal, but

the