the hillsides, mostly thorns or scrubby oaks, gnarled and bent and
kept down by the western wind: here and there also were yew-trees,
and whiles the hillsides would be grown over with box-wood, but none
very great; and often juniper grew abundantly. This then was the
country of the Shepherds, who were friends both of the Dalesmen and
the Woodlanders. They dwelt not in any fenced town or thorp, but
their homesteads were scattered about as was handy for water and
shelter. Nevertheless they had their own stronghold; for amidmost of
their country, on the highest of a certain down above a bottom where
a willowy stream winded, was a great earthwork: the walls thereof
were high and clean and overlapping at the entering in, and amidst of
it was a deep well of water, so that it was a very defensible place:
and thereto would they drive their flocks and herds when war was in
the land, for nought but a very great host might win it; and this
stronghold they called Greenbury.

These Shepherd-Folk were strong and tall like the Woodlanders, for
they were partly of the same blood, but burnt they were both ruddy
and brown: they were of more words than the Woodlanders but yet not
many-worded. They knew well all those old story-lays, (and this
partly by the minstrelsy of the Woodlanders,) but they had scant
skill in wizardry, and would send for the Woodlanders, both men and
women, to do whatso they needed therein. They were very hale and
long-lived, whereas they dwelt in clear bright air, and they mostly
went light-clad even in the winter, so strong and merry were they.
They wedded with the Woodlanders and the Dalesmen both; at least
certain houses of them did so. They grew no corn; nought but a few
pot-herbs, but had their meal of the Dalesmen; and in the summer they
drave some of their milch-kine into the Dale for the abundance of
grass there; whereas their own hills and bents and winding valleys