In
those days, beyond driving the flocks, when necessary, from the hill to
more sheltered, low-lying country, but little provision was ever made
for severe weather, and even the precaution of shifting the sheep to
lower ground was frequently too long delayed. Turnips, of course, had
not yet come into cultivation in Scotland, and feed-stuffs were
generally unknown.
This time farmers were caught napping. On 20th February a rising wind
drove before it snow, fine powdered and dry as March dust, and with the
waxing gale, and cold "intense to a degree never before remembered," the
drift quickly became a swirling blizzard which no living thing could
face. Day and night for thirteen days this maelstrom of snow continued,
and till the 29th of March no decided improvement took place in the
weather; the snow lay deep, and the frost held, so that there was "much
loss of sheep by the snow, and of whole families in the moor and high
lands; much loss of cows everywhere, also of wild beasts, as of doe and
roe."
"The Thirteen Drifty Days," folk called this storm, and by that name it
has gone down to history. "About the fifth and sixth days of the storm,"
says the Ettrick Shepherd, writing in _Blackwood's Magazine_ of July
1819, "the young sheep began to fall into a sleepy and torpid state, and
all that were affected in the evening died over-night.
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