Sheep from the Emerald Isle

In town briefly on a showery day I dodged into the middle of the square to cop a shot of this sheep transporter from Kerry. No sooner than I'd got home but my old local historian friend rang to say he's spotted me and I was in trouble for taking the picture but he'd pretended he didn't know me. He was pulling my leg of course.

This isn't a common sight here - usually we're exporting sheep - but they followed the bus up the road north so I guess these were some farmer's purchase, fresh off the Irish ferry on St Patrick's Day. I'd like to think that was their destination anyway.They were jammed tightly together but that way they don't get fall and get hurt in transit as their fleeces make a natural bubble-wrap.

Sheep transport always brings to my mind two poems written by the Welsh hobo-poet W.H. Davies who went to America in 1893, aged 22, worked at any job he could get and rode the rails until he lost his leg to a train. Then he started writing poetry and in these he harks back to the time he spent on board ships conveying sheep for slaughter.

SHEEP

When I was once in Baltimore
A man came up to me and cried,
"Come, I have eighteen hundred sheep,
And we will sail on Tuesday's tide.

If you will sail with me, young man,
I'll pay you fifty shillings down;
These eighteen hundred sheep I take
From Baltimore to Glasgow town."

He paid me fifty shillings down,
I sailed with eighteen hundred sheep;
We soon had cleared the harbour's mouth,
We soon were in the salt sea deep.

The first night we were out at sea
Those sheep were quiet in their mind;
The second night they cried with fear -
They smelt no pastures in the wind.

They sniffed poor things for their green fields,
They cried so loud I could not sleep:
For fifty thousand shillings down
I would not sail again with sheep.

A CHILD'S PET

When I sailed out of Baltimore,
With twice a thousand head of sheep,
They would not eat, they would not drink,
But bleated o'er the deep.

Inside the pens we crawled each day
To sort the living from the dead;
And when we reached the Mersey's mouth
Had lost five hundred head.

Yet every night and day one sheep,
That had no fear of man or sea
Stuck through the bars its pleading face,
And it was stroked by me.

And to the sheep-men standing near,
'You see,' I said, 'this one tame sheep?
It seems a child has lost her pet,
And cried herself to sleep.'

So every time we passed it by
Sailing to England's slaughterhouse,
Eight ragged sheep-men -- tramps and thieves --
Would stroke that sheep's black nose.