Legend Black of the Shepherding

his is a sad history... nobody knows if it is actual, but all they count it as if it was it. Today, the black of the shepherding is an amulet of the luck that is good to find lost things and to be protected of the wrongs. Let us begin with the start, when the black was a petty boy in the flesh...

There for 1871, there was in Uruguay a rich farmer (some say that it was Portuguese, other Spanish one), owner of a great sheepfold of sheep and several slaves. Among their servitude he/she was an about 12 year-old black, that had as task to take care of the gentleman's sheep. That was the famous Black of the Shepherding. They count that it was very flaquito for their age, and that he/she had some big and sad eyes.

Every day, the petty black went out with the sheepfold to search a place of tender grass for the sheep. There the whole day passed, until it arrived the night and the black, tired and hungry, returned to its homestead. He/she never complained. A summer afternoon, the black always made the routine, and it took to the sheep to the green grass. But the heat of that day was unbearable, so the petty slave was thrown to the shade of an ombú to be protected of so much sun. But unintentionally, it was sleeping. When he/she opened the eyes, their master was in front of him, extremely angry for the inattention. Where are my sheep?, they say that he/she screamed him/her. The black didn't know what to tell him/her, but imagining that it will be flogged with force, he/she asked for forgiveness. Where are my sheep?, it continued screaming the master, more and more angry. The sheep were close, because the black grieves he/she had slept some minutes. So after walking some steps, the boy found the sheepfold that he pastured peacefully. Alleviated the petty slave was when the master realized something: it lacked a lamb, a black lamb as him that accidentally was the favorite of their master.

The black of the shepherding offered to search it forthwith, but the master was so angry that he decided to punish him without at least to give him/her the opportunity to search it. He/she thought of flogging it until the fatigue, but he/she was happened a better idea of punishing him, or rather, much worse. Without the black opposed submitted, the master it tied it to some stakes that it arranged above an anthill. And he/she left it there. The end of the history is obvious: the black died, itched by the ants and roasted by the sun. Newly to the three days of that horrible tragedy, some troperos that happened over there found it dead.

From then on, the Black of the Shepherding transformed into martyr, and its history passes from a generation to another. Their image was transformed in prints and in an amulet that many take hung up of the neck. Every time that gets lost something, the black is who he/she makes miracles so that the lost object appears. And the certain thing is that he/she appears, the same as that black lamb that was simply to some meters beyond the sheepfold, being protected, the same as the black, under the shade of a tree.