SHEPHERDS ON STILTS.

SHEPHERDS ON STILTS. The review I posted on yesterday has a wonderful photograph of a half dozen shepherds on stilts in a patch of heath in the Landes in about 1900. The stilts have a third leg for support, and the shepherds appear to be conversing. Graham Robb is quoted in the caption as writing in THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE, “’A shepherd on stilts could travel at the speed of a trotting horse’.” Of course, with my interest in unusual sports such as wife carrying and competitive eating, I wondered whether the shepherds ever competed in races on stilts. They did. This wikipedia article has an excerpt from an 1891 Scientific American article on Gascon stilt walking which says that stilt racing was common in Gascon villages in the nineteenth century with girls competing as well as boys.