With my back to a sessile oak tree, I was lazing on a bed of moss with the hyacinth scent of bluebells drifting around when a more pungent, muskier odour registered on the slight breeze. I stirred and looked along the path leading into the depths of the wood.
Movement! A flock of the feral goats (Capra hircus hircus) that have long populated these woods trotted into view, a magnificently horned patriarch to the fore. Behind him, a playful, skipping mayhem of kids were being butted into some semblance of order by two attendant nanny goats. The billy passed close by me, glared at me with strange, fierce eyes. “What are you doing in my domain?” they seemed to query. Then the whole troop scattered into the trees.
These were not “wild” goats, I should add – there are few truly wild animals on these isles, most having been exterminated in previous centuries. They inhabit these lower slopes of Garnedd Elidir, as do similar flocks in Cwm Nantcol, Cadair Idris and Bwlch Tryfan. The goats graze the cliff edges that might otherwise tempt the less agile sheep out of their comfort zones and leave them stranded.
The Capricorn family have been in Britain since humans first domesticated them centuries or even millennia ago: our ancestors ate their strong-flavoured flesh, stretched their skins resoundingly across the oak frames of their drums and made kumis – a fermented drink – from milk given from the gentler nannies. There was a symbiotic co-dependence between goats and humans, and for the hill farmers and shepherds of Eryri, that is still the case.
I once watched a goat bounding up the very severe Menlove Edwards climb of Brant, on Clogwyn Y Grochan in the Llanberis Pass. I doubt if any human climber has ever accomplished it more adroitly or elegantly. He strolled across the water-streaked upper slabs and posed dramatically on a steep rib. I thought him magnificent. As to the petty minds that berate him for devastating their gardens, at risk of getting your goat, I’d rather goats than gardens in the hills.
Communing with this flock today reminds me of the L Harrison Matthews quote, that the goat “comes nearest to being a true wild animal if it is emancipated from domestication”.
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