Apropos, from a book I read long ago and have forgotten, except for this passage:
"Prior to the twentieth century, when life spans were shorter, a shepherd might have known hundreds of songs, poems, and stories and several languages, how to play several musical instruments, tan leather, make butter, dry and preserve meat, build a shelter, and prepare the dead for burial."
There's a lot of bucolic bullshit in that claim. Shepherds were lucky to speak their own mother tongue. Making butter was women's work. Tanning leather was a specialist profession. Playing several musical instruments presupposes owning them.
"Prior to the twentieth century, when life spans were shorter, a shepherd might have known hundreds of songs, poems, and stories and several languages, how to play several musical instruments, tan leather, make butter, dry and preserve meat, build a shelter, and prepare the dead for burial."
There is so much potential in all of us!