Yan, Tan, Tethera Find!
I was thinking today about the Herdwick sheep which are so much a part of the Cumbrian landscape. They are a small hardy breed which 'heft' to the fellside on which they were bred. There is a whole Cumbrian language which hill farmers use when talking about their sheep. In its first winter the lamb becomes a hogg. The first clipping changes it to a shearling and the second winter translates it to a twinter. Once married, and a proud young mother rising three, it has the full dignity of a yow. The rams are tups or tips, but if castrated they are gelds or wethers. The term gimmer is applied to female sheep before they have reached yowhood. And when hill farmers count their sheep they do so in the Cumbrian dialect which begins: yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick.
This reminded me of a small book which I had read years ago. It is called "Yan, the story of a Lakeland lamb" by Fiona Satow. Yan is an orphan lamb, one of three brought in from the storm to be reared by Hannah in the farmhouse kitchen. Different from the start, she grows wilful and headstrong, impatient of the placid meadow flock, restless for the freedom of the high fell. Her chance comes but the open fell in high winter is no place for a lamb. Yet, out of tragedy, hope, life and purpose are born.
The shepherd, Tom, and his sister, Hannah, are based on real people. From the age of seven Fiona Satow lived in Great Langdale just 200 yards from the real Tom and Hannah's farmhouse. She writes that her first Lakeland memories are of suckling orphan lambs on the farm and later she spent many happy hours walking the fells and exploring on horseback.
This is a delightful book, illustrated with some lovely pen and ink drawings, and would be a great story to read aloud to children. It really brings to life the people, animals and landscape of Great Langdale.
www.herdwick-sheep.com www.ruskinmuseum.com/herdwicks.htm
7 September 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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