Tea at Trianon: The History of Shepherding Through Time

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 28, 2024

The History of Shepherding Through Time

From Rural Historia:

Shepherding stands as one of the most ancient vocations, its origins going back through the millennia to the very dawn of British agriculture in the Neolithic period. During this transformative era, the early inhabitants of the British Isles began their shift from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence towards a settled agrarian lifestyle. Central to this transformation was the management of livestock, a task that would come to define much of rural British life. Sheep were amongst the first animals to be domesticated in these islands, valued for their meat, milk, and, significantly, their wool.
The early ages presented the British Isles as a land rich with expansive tracts of open territory, characterized by its vast swaths of rolling fields and favourable grazing conditions. Such an environment was not only ideal for sheep farming but also important in the development of the distinct pastoral culture that would flourish there. The abundance and quality of pasture facilitated the emergence of various breeds of sheep, each uniquely adapted to the specific climatic and geographic conditions of the region. (Read more.)