A well travelled ewe
LONG before the railway and livestock floats came to the Highlands, the Ardtornish shepherds used to set off walking every September to the Falkirk Tryst with a drove of cast ewes and wedders.
One year, after swimming them across the Corran and Ballachulish narrows and somewhere between Glencoe and Bridge of Orchy, they missed a blackface ewe which they knew well. They never expected to see her again but she arrived back at Ardtornish in November having travelled round the head of Loch Leven and Loch Eil.
The following year the same ewe was sent away again. This time the shepherds managed to get her into the parks at Stenhousemuir near Falkirk the night before the sale. Next morning she was missing. ‘Ah well,’ thought the shepherds, ‘that’s a pity after getting her here but that will be the last of her, she’ll never make Morvern of it from here.’
In May, the following year, she arrived back on her home hirsel on Ardtornish with two cross lambs at foot.