Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle

by Alfred Ollivant

  “What’s the matter with ye, Wullie?” he asked again. “Will you, too, leave me?”

  Then Bessie, watching fearfully, saw him bend, heave the great body on his back, and stagger away.

  Limp and hideous, the carcass hung down from the little man’s shoulders. The huge head, with its grim, wide eyes and lolling tongue, jolted and swayed with the motion, seeming to grin a ghastly defiance at the world it had left. And the last Bessie saw of them was that bloody, rolling head, with the puny legs staggering beneath their load, as the two passed out of sight and out of the knowledge of that world.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  In the Devil’s Bowl, next day, they found the pair: Adam McAdam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone. The dog, his bitter expression glazed and ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped against that humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black Killer had met his fate; and, close by, his master lying on his back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still clasping a crumpled photograph; the weary body at rest at last, the mocking face—mocking no longer—lit up by a whole-souled, transfiguring happiness.

  Postscript

  ADAM McADAM and his Red Wull lie buried together: one just inside the sacred ground of the church cemetery, the other just outside.

  The only mourners at the funeral were David, James Moore, Maggie, and a gray dog peering through the gate.

  During the service, a carriage stopped at the churchyard, and a lady with a graceful figure and a gentle face stepped out and came across the grass to pay her last respects to the dead. And Lady Eleanour, as she joined the little group around the grave, seemed to notice that the parson’s voice was more solemn than usual as he spoke the words: “Earth to earth—ashes to ashes—dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When you wander in the gray hill-country of the North, in the loneliest corner of that lonely land you may happen to come upon a low farmhouse, lying in the shadow of the Muir Pike.

  When you enter, a tall old man comes out to greet you—the Master of Kenmuir. His shoulders are bent, now; the hair that was so dark is frosted; but the blue-gray eyes look you in the face as proudly as they ever did.

  And while the girl with the crown of yellow hair is preparing food for you—they are welcoming in the extreme, these Northerners—you will notice on the mantelpiece, standing alone, a massive silver cup, with a dent in it.

  That is the world-famous Shepherds’ Trophy, won outright, as the old man will tell you, by Owd Bob, the last and best of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir. The last because he is the best; because once, for an eternally long moment, James Moore had thought he was the worst.

  When at length you leave the house, the old man will go with you to the top of the slope to show you the way.

  “You cross the stream; over Langholm Hollow, yonder; past the Bottom; and up the hill on the far side. You’ll come upon the house on top. And you might meet the Owd One on the road. Good-day to you, good-day.”

  So you go as he has told you; across the stream, around the edge of the Hollow, over the Bottom and up the hill again.

  On the way, as the Master has predicted, you come upon an old gray dog, trotting soberly along. The Owd One, indeed, seems to spend the evening of his life going thus between Kenmuir and the Grange. The black muzzle is almost white now; the dog who used to trot so smooth and strong, is now stiff and slow; ancient and honored, indeed, he is, and people still talk about him as the best sheepdog in the North.

  As he passes, he stops to look at you. The noble head is high, and one foot is raised; and you look into two big gray eyes like none you have ever seen before—soft, a little dim, and infinitely sad.

  That is Owd Bob of Kenmuir; as many stories are told about him as there are flowers in May. And with him dies the last of the immortal line of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  You travel on up the hill, somewhat thoughtful, and knock at the door of the house at the top.

  A woman, blooming with the loveliness of motherhood, opens the door to you. And nestling in her arms is a little boy with golden hair and a happy face, like one of the cherubs painted by Correggio.

  You ask the child his name. He kicks and squeals, and looks up at his mother; and in the end he whispers shyly, as if it was the funniest joke in all this merry world, “Adum Mataddum.”

  THE END

  Bob, as he appeared in the 1901 edition of Bob, Son of Battle.

  Photograph by A. Radclyffe Dugmore

  Afterword

  I FIRST read Bob, Son of Battle when I was eleven or twelve years old, or maybe older—I can’t be sure. But I never forgot the story or the experience of reading it, in all the years after that. I was so moved by the story, I felt as though I had lived through it myself.

  The strange thing is, though, that the characters which moved me the most were not the “good” master and the “good” dog, and the “good” daughter of the master, and the other good people in the story, but the “bad” shepherd, Adam McAdam, and his “bad” dog, Red Wull. I suppose this was because there were so many moments in the story when I could see that with just a little love and patience and help from others, the bad man would have been able to change. There were good qualities in him: He was capable of love and affection and loyalty, he was strong and brave, he was a hard worker, he was expert at handling his sheep. But fate was against him—things had not gone his way. And the same was true of his dog, Red Wull, who was an excellent sheepdog, loved his master, was loyal to him, defended him, and craved his affection and attention: There were good qualities in Red Wull, too, and it was not really the fault of that fierce and courageous tiny puppy that he grew up to be what he was. No one—no person and no dog—is all good, and no one is all bad, and this book reflects the truth of that.

  Some writers are sure, from a very early age, that they want to be writers. This was not the case for the author of Owd Bob. The Englishman Alfred Ollivant was headed for quite a different career, and this book would never have been written if he had not suffered a very serious accident that caused him to change the direction of his life. Ollivant had just graduated from military school. He had finished his training to be an officer in the British army. He was an expert horseback rider and had won a special prize for his skill while still in school. He was only nineteen years old and preparing to begin his career. It is most likely that he would have gone off to faraway India, where other men in his family had also gone as military officers. We can guess that he was now spending the months before his move gathering the things he would need to take with him: trunks and boxes of clothing and other supplies. But one day, during this time, he was out riding in the English countryside when he had a bad fall from his horse. No one is sure how it happened, but in this fall he hurt his spine very seriously.

  For many months, he was under the care of doctors and nurses. Still, he thought he might get better and return to his career in the army. At last, he saw that if he recovered at all, it would take many years, and he might never be strong enough for life in the army. He gave up any idea of becoming an officer.

  Because of his injury, Ollivant had to spend his days lying flat on his back. There was very little he could do but read. One book he read was by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of the adventure stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped. But what Ollivant was reading was not an adventure story; it was a book Stevenson had written when he was much older, and looking back on his life, recalling things that had happened to him and that he liked to remember. It was called Memories and Portraits. One of the stories was about a shepherd he had become friends with long ago.

  When he was a young man, Stevenson used to take long walks over a hill called Allermuir, in the rolling Pentland Hills to the southwest of the city of Edinburgh, and there he often came upon this shepherd, whose name was John Todd. Although the old shepherd was often
cross with city people who came walking in the country, and angry at the world in general, he and young Stevenson grew to be friends. Stevenson would walk with the shepherd and watch him as he worked. On one of their walks, John Todd told him the story of a fine sheepdog he had known. It was not his sheepdog but one belonging to another shepherd. This sheepdog was young but talented, and learning quickly to be very good at his job—and the job of a sheepdog is complicated and important: He must not only understand his master’s orders, and even sometimes read his master’s mind, but also use his own wits and judgment. Without a dog, a shepherd would not be able to control his flock.

  But this dog had turned into something that shepherds dread, and that is a sheep-killer. Sometimes even the best dog may turn into a sheep-killer. This dog, as John Todd told Stevenson, would go roaming far away from his master’s land and flocks, and find a sheep from another flock to kill. The way he discovered it was this: As he was resting one day under a bush, near a small pool that was used for bathing sheep, he saw a young collie come skulking down the hillside, as though secretly. He knew the dog. What was it doing so far from home, and why did it look so guilty? John Todd watched as it came to the water’s edge and then plunged in, washing away from its mouth and head the evidence of its crime. Now John Todd had to tell the owner of the dog what he had seen. And that was the end of that young and talented sheepdog—because the shepherds know that once a dog turns into a sheep-killer, that dog will never change.

  Ollivant, lying on his back, slowly healing, often in pain, was moved and impressed by this story. The idea came to him that he could write a story himself, an invented story, about a brave and skillful sheepdog that turned into a sheep-killer. He did not mean to write a novel, only a short story. But the story grew and grew, until he saw that only a novel would be large enough to hold all the parts of it that he had imagined. He wrote the novel lying on his back, often out in his backyard because the doctors wanted him to get a lot of fresh air. He wrote on a board that had been made into a sort of writing desk and set up across his chest. Sometimes the wind blew his pages away.

  When he was finished writing the novel, he sent it to publishers in both the United States and England. It was accepted for publication in both countries. In the States, it was called Bob, Son of Battle, while in England, it had a different title: Owd Bob, the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. Also, the English publisher asked him to rewrite the book and change many parts of it. In the English version, the book starts with McAdam in the kitchen with his old dog Cutty Sark. In the American version, it starts with the farmworkers of Kenmuir working in the farmyard. Even the tiny puppy Red Wull comes into McAdam’s life differently in the English version: McAdam finds him out in the hills, crouching in the grass by the side of his dead mother. In the American version, a man passing through town is offering him for sale in the local tavern. We do not yet know why the English publisher wanted Ollivant to tell the story in a slightly different way. The most important scenes, and the end of the story, are the same.

  In America, the book was a big success right away, and it soon was in England, too. It went on being bought and read by hundreds and even thousands of people for many, many years. It was made into a movie, and then later into another movie, and then another, and then another—four movies altogether. It also came out as a Dell comic book and in other versions that were shorter and sometimes simpler than the original. Even though it was a sad story, in many ways, it was very popular with grown-ups and children both. Some people said—and some people still say—that it is the greatest dog story of all time. It is hard to believe, now, that the story was written more than a hundred years ago, because it is still so exciting and moving.

  As for Ollivant, fourteen years went by before he recovered enough from his injuries to return to a more or less normal life, and even then he was often not in good health. But he was no longer interested in joining the army. He was now a writer. He had written several more books in those fourteen years. And he went on writing, book after book. I’ve read one more, so far, called Boy Woodburn. It is about a girl, an expert horseback rider, who disguises herself as a boy so that she can compete in one of the most important races in England, called the Grand National. It is another gripping story.

  Even though I had never forgotten Bob, Son of Battle, I began to think that not many people knew it anymore. I would ask friends who loved to read if they had read it, but most of them had never even heard of it. I was sure that not many children had read it. I wondered if that was because the book was too hard to read nowadays.

  I remembered how difficult parts of the book were, most of all the speech of the characters. The story takes place in the north of England, out in the country, and in those days, country people, especially the working people, like the shepherds, spoke their own kind of English, with their own words for many things. If you were visiting from London, or from America, you might understand some of what they said, but there would be many more things you would not understand at all. Instead of “know” they would say “ken.” Instead of “nothing” they would say “nowt,” instead of “must” they would say “mun,” and instead of “old” they would say “owd.”

  If you have read The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, you may remember the Yorkshire speech of Dickon and his family, and how one of the other main characters, Mary, likes to learn it and practice it because she likes the way it sounds. Yorkshire, where that book takes place, is not very far from Cumberland, where Owd Bob takes place, and in some ways the speech sounds the same.

  But one of the most important characters, the angry and unhappy shepherd McAdam, is not from the north of England but from even farther north, over the border in Scotland, and his way of speaking is even more different. He uses words that even the English do not understand, such as “aiblins” for “maybe” and “gey” for “very.” To him, “naethin’ ava” means “nothing at all.” Here is something McAdam says about his son, David (McAdam is speaking to his dog, Red Wull, as he often does in the book): “I’ve tholed mair fra him, Wullie, than Adam M’Adam ever thocht to thole from ony man.” This means: “I have endured more from him, Wullie, than Adam McAdam ever thought he would have to endure from any man.” You can begin to understand it if you try, as Mary in The Secret Garden began to understand the speech of Yorkshire, but you might not have the patience.

  I did not want Ollivant’s powerful story to be forgotten simply because it was difficult to read, so I had an idea. I would go through the whole book, and change the speech of the characters from their Cumbrian or Scottish way of speaking to regular, standard English, so that it would not be so hard to read. And that is what I began to do. But once I started, I saw that there were other things about the way the story was written that made it hard to read. The book was written a long time ago, and habits of writing and speaking were different then. Sentences were often more complicated. The author, Ollivant, also uses expressions that we do not use anymore and might not understand nowadays. He uses words we know, but in a different way from the way we use them. For instance, he sometimes uses “without” to mean “outside”: where he writes “She bid him halt without” we would write, “She told him to stay outside.” There are other words he uses that we won’t understand at all because they are words used only by people whose business is raising sheep—words like “wether,” “gimmer,” “tup,” and “hogg.” Others are words for things in the landscape of Cumberland, like “fell,” “ghyll,” “beck,” and “scaur” (meaning “stretch of open country,” “ravine,” “small brook,” and “steep, rocky place”). And then there are quite standard words that we simply may not know, like debouch, wraith, smithy, anent, worsted, inanition, erstwhile, asseverated, hearken, and so on.

  The odd thing is that because the story is so powerful, you can read right over these hard words and puzzling expressions and not mind, because you are so eager to know what happens next. That is what I did when I first read it. But not everyone will keep going when
they come to a hard sentence. They may give up, and put the book away, and never go back to it. So I decided that I would not only change the speech of the characters but also change the way the story was told, just enough so that almost everything could be understood without any problem, and there would be nothing to get in the way of the story. And that is what I did. I tried not to change it more than I had to, because the way Ollivant had written it was very good, and I did not want to lose that. I even left in some of the hard words and sentences. Lastly, I gave the book a new title that combined the American title and the English title.

  I hope that if people like reading Bob, Son of Battle in this version, they will try reading it in the original, exactly the way Ollivant wrote it, so as to enjoy the speech of Cumberland and Scotland and every word of the story the way it was first written. But more than anything else, I hope the story will have a new life and find many more readers.

  —LYDIA DAVIS

  ALFRED OLLIVANT (1874–1927) was born in Old Charlton, Kent, the son of a colonel in the Royal Horse Artillery. Shortly after he graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, intending to pursue a career in the army, he was thrown from his horse and seriously injured. While beginning his recuperation from the accident (he was to remain under his doctors’ care for the next fourteen years), he wrote Owd Bob: The Grey Dog of Kenmuir (known in the United States as Bob, Son of Battle), which was a best seller both in the United Kingdom and the United States when it came out in 1898. Ollivant would go on to publish fourteen more novels, as well as various occasional essays, poems, and other works, including, during the First World War, a series of articles describing wartime life in England for an American audience.

  MARGUERITE KIRMSE (1885–1954) was born in Bournesmouth, England. She emigrated to the United States as an accomplished harpist in order to continue her musical education, but instead embarked on a highly successful career as an illustrator. She is best known for her drawings of dogs, including those in Lassie, Come-Home by Eric Knight.