Bastard? Reverend Thomas Bastard that is. Not to be confused with the Australian Thomas Bastard. The Rev. has a quote floating around that goes like this...
"A black sheep is a biting beast."
When a blogger friend sent this to me, I couldn't figure out what it meant. So a little investigation turned up a Wikipedia article on Thomas Bastard. And the book that the quote came from. Here's the whole quote...
Sheep haue eate vp our medows & our downes,
Our corne, our wood, whole villages & townes,
Yea, they haue eate vp many wealthy men,
Besides widowes and orphane childeren.
Besides our statutes and our iron lawes,
Which they haue swallowed down into their maws.
Till now I thought the prouerbe did but iest,
Which said a blacke sheepe was a biting beast.
Bastard’s Chrestoleros, 1598, p. 90.
Thomas appears not to like sheep in general.
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16 comments:
Thank you for educating me about both Thomas Bastards.
Short version : I hate ewe.
Ole Phat Stu makes me laugh. I've never heard of those Bastards.
Sue - It's always good to know who the bastards are.
Stu - I'm going to be laughing all day about that one.
River - Don't encourage him. His puns get worse.
Mr Bastard was never one to pull the wool over our eyes.
A lot of peasants were thrown off of the land by the rich folks for sheep farming in Scotland so perhaps sheep were not popular with lots of folks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
Old English is so hard for me to read and understand! Thanks for the Cliff Notes interpretation.
Lady M has ID'd the real social and economic source of Rev Bastard's antipathy to sheep and sheep farming.
You do find some interesting stuff to post!
Where do you find this stuff?
Bill - Most of the time, but accidents wool happen.
Lady - I think that would do it for me too.
Kathy - It helps to read those memes with all the letters scrambled up.
Deb - Yes she did.
John - I found it in my inbox...
Peg - ... from Cloudia.
You're likely to get a huge flock of people coming to read this one.
Back in the 70s, in the little farm town my parents still live in, Dean Vrooman (a 'city slicker') joined the staff at KJDY, the local radio station.
One of his duties was to read the daily stock price report. He had done so for nearly two weeks when someone finally had the heart to tell him that a female sheep is NOT an EeWee.
Honest to god they still laugh about it.
You might say it's a sheep thrill.
Ami - I like EeWee. It's better than Uuuuuuu.
EeeWee! I love it!
River - It is better, isn't it?
To Blogger "Deal With It" - Stay on topic.
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