Lincolnshire shepherds count their sheep

Lincolnshire shepherds count their sheep

Preferably to be read in a Lincolnshire accent

When sheep were counted by the head ˗

the count kept in the shepherd’s head ˗

and the carrying of an abacus was abjured,

and the battery-charged electronic calculator was

still a twinkle in its creator’s eye, then

shepherds in Lincolnshire county counted

not in decimal, but vigesimally –

taking in fingers, thumbs and, it’s supposed, toes,

and producing the following dial-up-rhyme

to keep track of their woolly subjects crowns:

Yan tan tethera pethera pimp;

sethera lethera hovera covera dik;

yan-a-dik tan-a-dik

tethera-dik

pethera-dik

bumfit;

yan-a-bumfit

tan-a-bumfit

tethera-bumfit

pethera-bumfit

figgot.

Some words within the groups of five gained

easy traction - tethera, pethera - while

sethera, lethera, hovera, covera made only a

minor mark. And sad to say, pimp and figgot,

words surely on a par for originality with

bumfit and dik, got little room to breathe.

What would the English-speaking world give to

count thus: one, two, three, four,

pimp,

or sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,

figgot.

The humdrum of twenty stands abashed before

figgot, while five is a

simpleton fricative, cousin to

fünf, or fimf, or fimm,

having none of the former luxury of

pimp (now impoverished, playing a sleazy role).

Let us stand with the sheep and the

shepherds, baring our fingers and toes in the

cold, counting the dag-marked rain-soaked

fleeces, noting each vigesimal group with a

pebble, a notch on our crook, or a mark in the

mud-dank ground, with language that’s old, but proven:

Yan tan tethera pethera pimp;

sethera lethera hovera covera dik;

yan-a-dik tan-a-dik

tethera-dik

pethera-dik

bumfit;

yan-a-bumfit

tan-a-bumfit

tethera-bumfit

pethera-bumfit

figgot.

Coda:

Some women knitting, or counting their

stitches, followed the shepherds’ enumerations,

clicking their needles or twisting their wool,

sewing up jerkin sleeves, braiding men’s britches,

fashioning the gear for their rustic men’s bags of bones,

sewing while stirring hot broths in their iron pots ˗

let us join with the throng of them spread through the land,

wizened or comely or middle-aged matrons, all counting:

Yan tan tethera pethera pimp;

sethera lethera hovera covera dik;

yan-a-dik tan-a-dik

tethera-dik

pethera-dik

bumfit;

yan-a-bumfit

tan-a-bumfit

tethera-bumfit

pethera-bumfit

figgot.