THE LATERAL HISTORY OF SHEEP

As related by Sid Kipper

Now it's time to look at sheep.  Of course, if you're in a town you won't be able to actually see them, but you can always go and look up them in the library.  Or, if you live in Wales, just look out of the window.

There's lots of things you could do with sheep in the old songs.  You could milk the ewes.  You could steal them.  Or you could shear them, which is like taking their coats off for them and hanging them up, although they didn't normally offer them a cup of tea afterwards.

Now where I come from in Norfolk we haven't had much trouble with sheep for a long time, because we found out what was causing them.  But elsewhere in the country they were infested with sheep, and they used to form gangs to try and deal with them, because they all had to be sheared, of course.  They used to all meet up, and elect a leader, and decide how much to charge.  To make it more interesting they had a series of fines, although I'd have thought it would be more interesting not to have fines and keep all the money instead.  I think they were fined for things like wool gathering, breaching the fleece, and, of course, sheep worrying..  That was very serious in those days, because then they'd have a hell of a job catching the sheep afterwards.  There's even an old song about that - "It takes a hurried man to shear a worried sheep".

"From The Wool Gatherer, the magazine for sheep-fanciers, 1898;

"The feast begins with the Head Shearer calling out the traditional toast: 'The sheep have been sheared', which is answered by the company with the traditional response: 'And the farmers have been fleeced'.  Then the takings of the crew are distributed according to the rank of each man and boy.  After this the ceremony varies according to local custom, but will usually include arguments breaking out over the relative shares received.  Then the company will set about the food and drink provided, and then set about each other, until finally ending the evening with some fine chorus singing in the cells."

Shearing was dry and thirsty work, and often there would be trouble with drunken shearers.  Well, I'm not a Methodist, but even I know that drinking and shearing don't mix.  That's why I've never done any shearing.  My old grandfather used to say 'If God meant us to shear sheep and drink at the same time he'd have made sheep more comfortable to sit on, and provided somewhere to put your mug', and there's never a truer word spoken in jest.

Of course, there are lots of different makes of sheep.  You ought to get a chart, really.  There's Cotswold, and Border, and Red Leicester, and loads more.  Round our way the sheep were all kept on the Norfolk Ups, which is the high ground round Northrups and Southrups, so the breed was called the Up Ewe.  They were marvellous sheep, they were.  They gave fine wool, lovely meat, and they were always very healthy.  The only trouble with them was that they were very hard to sell.  You used to take a sheep to market in North Walsham, and go up to the dealer and say "Would you like to buy a sheep?"  So the dealer would say "What sort is it?"  So you'd tell him.  Well, very often the sheep would escape in the ensuing fracas!

Round about Rollesby they were famous for their small rams.  They were known as the Tiny Tups - small, but perfectly farmed.  The breeding rams were known as sex-tuplets.  They bred them that way because they were used as mascots by the Druids, who were a secret society, and consequently didn't want anybody to know about their secret mascot.  They were wasting their time, of course.  Like I said, they were famous for their small rams.

"After the removal of the first fleece the tup-hogget becomes a shearling, the ewe-hogget a grimmer, and the wether-hogget a dinmont."

Well, yes, there's a lot of technical stuff with the sheep.  For instance there's folding them.  Now, that's not nearly as easy as it sounds, because the legs tend to stick out and then they won't stack properly.  Then there's training the sheepdogs.  They have to learn to follow the sheep wherever they go.

"After the removal of the second fleece the shearling becomes a two-shear tup, the grimmer a ewe, and the dinmont a wether."

Yes, well.  Then there's making sure that when the ewes drop their lambs they don't land on their heads and damage their brains, although I reckon that's a waste of effort as there's not brain much to damage.  Then there's dipping, which you have to do every now and then to make sure they're full.

"After the removal of the third fleece the ewe is called a twinter ewe, and when it ceases to breed , a draft-ewe."

Yes, well, that's enough of that.  You make it sound like the dance of the seven fleeces.  I'm getting quite excited, as a matter of fact, so I'll change the subject, if you don't mind.

Now the biggest trouble with sheep is shepherds.  I mean they can't even say their name right.  Strictly speaking, with a 'p' and an 'h' in the middle, it ought to be sheffords, which would mean they sounded like they all came from a town in Bedfordshire!

And shepherds are forever losing their sheep.  Now, to be fair, sheep are very good at escaping.  You may remember those ones on the telly that learned to get over the cattle grid by lying down and rolling over it?  They should have got a sheep grid, of course.  And a lot of people wonder why sheep are always getting out and rampaging.  Well, you know that old nursery rhyme; "Little Blue Boy, come blow your horn up, the sheep's in the meadow, the dog's having pups"?  Well there's a clue in that, because it turns out in the final scene that Little Boy Blue is under the haystack, fast asleep.  And that's the problem.  You see, shepherds are always having to count sheep.  I mean, there's not a lot else to do.  And what happens when you count sheep?  Well you drop off, don't you?  That's why they had to do things like blow up his horn to wake him up.  Mind you, not everyone in the old days agreed that having a lot of wide awake shepherds running around the place was a good idea.

Of course nowadays we have those automatic shepherd scarers.  What they do is to hide them round the other side of the haystack, and then they go off every so often with a sound not unlike blowing up a horn.  Some people say it's not as good as the real thing, but it doesn't half startle the shepherds!  Mind you, there are a couple of side effects.  First off, it often flushes out the odd blushing milkmaid and lusty ploughboy who are in the haystack for purposes nothing to do with sheep, and therefore none of our business.  And secondly it usually stampedes the sheep, so if they aren't already in the meadow to start with they probably are afterwards.  But that's progress, I suppose.

"From Milton's Lycidas;

"And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread"."

Well, yes - and fly blow can be a bit of a problem, too.

Anyhow, I started off by telling you how we got rid of the sheep in Norfolk, but I never got round to mentioning how we got infested with them in the first place.  Well, it was all to do with what they called the Lowland Clearances.

"In the fourteenth century, according to Asa Briggs in A Social History of England, progress consisted of evicting people from their land in order to use it for sheep ranching.  He says; "There was one important incentive for farmers of ability and drive - the profitability of sheep farming, which required less labour"."

Now this was all to do with what they called the foreclosures, when they fenced off all the land, with the peasants on the outside.  What happened was that a few people were for it, and all the rest were against.  So, as the few were the ones with all the money, they got their own way anyhow.  I mean, it wasn't like today when rich people are only too pleased to do everything they can to help ordinary people.  In those days the Lords and so on could do whatever they liked.  And what they liked was that all the poor people were driven off the land to make way for their sheep.

"This sheep he has a greedy power,

Man, woman and child he will devour;

No hold, no house, can him withstand;

He swallows up both sea and land."

So the sheep got to get all the grass, and the people had nowhere to play football.  Now some people say it was only a joke, and people should have had more of a sense of humour about the starving, and so on.  And others say that it was all just practice, anyway, for what the same Lords and the like did a century later, at a higher altitude, in Scotland.  But I say that it was all a long time ago, and we should forgive and forget.  Anyhow, it's no good blaming the sheep.  They probably never wanted to come here in the first place.

"Half England is nought now but sheep;

In every corner they play bow-peep.

Lord them confound by twenty and ten,

And fill their places with Christian men."

In the end it was all sorted out by Turnip Townshend, the manager of the England football team.  He worked out a system of rogation, where the sheep could keep the grass down some of the time, and the people could play football on it the rest of the time.  Except in Derby, of course.  There the Rams play the football  - so I suppose the people must still have to eat the grass!