Baaa!

I was talking about sheep’s cheese, and other sheepy things, including the lovely wool that Icelandic sheep have; I wished I had bought some while I was there, we saw some great balls of wool in a shop in Reykjavik, and I could have had a go at knitting something… A friend showed us some holiday photos which included Herdwick sheep from the Lake District, and I remembered the programme ‘One Man and his Dog’ which was a competition for shepherds and their dogs… Herdwick were always very strong-willed and resisted the sheepdogs who were trying to round them up.

Then I got to wondering about the word sheep; like many words for farm animals its origin is Old English scēp, which comes from West Germanic dialect and is related to the Dutch word schaap. A phrase I remember reading in Agatha Christie’s novels is ‘sheep’s eyes’… if you make sheep’s eyes at someone you they quite like you!!