January 22, 2005

Lambing is a time of sheep song, and lambs are coming now, and we sing: me to them, them to me and them to themselves. When I approach the barn, and am as yet unseen by the sheep, I begin a song they know well to tell them it's only me, that I'm coming, I'm singing a song that becomes a duet. Mature sheep voices are deep and it's impossible to get into their register, so I take the high part. Out I sing in an alto falsetto: "Jaw-ng, oh jong, all the jong, all the goods, all the sheep, all the men...jaw-ng..." hearing me, knowing the song, the ewes chorus back in their cacophonous basso profundo "Maa-aah," 100 voices in random counterpoint rising to a roar, then I come in tenorishly, "All the beegs, all the jong...jaw-ng?..." (jong or jaw-ng = young and beegs = bigs, meaning pregnant ewe in our opera), Only to the sheep do I sing; they have taught me my part and we go on in our fugue as I walk up to the barn. If I hadn't begun singing from afar, they would have become startled and stampeded at my silent appearance in the barn doorway. I want to see them as they've arranged themselves; I want to see if there are any newborns; I want to see the dam and her get undisturbed, to see how they're getting along. But all I see is a sea of questioning sheep, quiet now, and I listen for another song, the song of the newly lambed ewe; it's an insistent gurgle of love that only a mother sings as she licks her newborn dry. There, in the corner, I hear her, I see nothing but sheep watching me, I make my way slowly through them, they part and I come upon the ewe singing to her lamb; she looks up at me in fear and defiance, as if to say "Don’t you steal my baby, you Herod you," and to reassure her I break into a bluesy little thing, "What a beautiful little man, you got mama; I ain't gonna hurt your man, mama; I love your man, mama."

And what does our little man look like, mama? He is snow white, shiny wet and steaming: his body temperature in 103 degrees and it's 10 degrees in the barn. He takes his first breath, shakes his head, flapping his ears noisily and opens his eyes as his head bobs. He weighs about 7 pounds; he's a foot long and maybe 11" in high when he bumbles to his feet, which is in minutes. His muscles shake, never having stood before; he takes a step, takes another and falls. But his singing mother continues to lick him, up he gets again, stronger, surer. Now the mystery intensifies. His first order of life is to get milk and somehow he knows it's at the back end of mother. After minimal trail and error, having been on his own four feet, on planet earth, for 15 minutes, he finds her udder; when he has gotten mama's warm milk in his mouth his tail wags. How he knows what he knows, does what he does, I don't know; people say it's instinct, but what's instinct? You mean like intuition? Well what's that, and how does intuition work, and so on. Who are we to reason away, to deconstruct, these marvels. When I tip him up to dip his navel in iodine to prevent infection, I don't see a scrotal sac which would be as flat as a poor boy's purse. He's a girl. A lovely little ewe has come to the farm.

Eugene Wyatt

Only To The Sheep Do I Sing by Eugene Wyatt