The countryside is a very practical sort place. There might be a bit of ornamentation here and there, but on the whole, if a wall is built in a certain way, or a gate has a contraption attached to it, then there will be a good practical reason.

So when I looked out of my window at the field next door to see a sheep running around wearing a rather jazzy looking harness I knew better than to think it was a fashion accessory. A quick internet search revealed that it wasn’t just a sheep, but it was a tup, and the running around was a purposeful chasing of ewes. As Iago says in Shakespeare’s Othello:

Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,

Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.

Except of course reproduction is the farmer’s desired outcome and if all goes well the same fields will be full of lambs in the Spring.

Now the more knowledgeable of you will already be saying you prefer a big dab of raddle on the chest rather than a harness, so I’ll explain what the harness is for. A sheep farmer needs to know if the tup has been ‘vigorous’ amongst the ewes, or if they are just mooching around saying ‘hello birds, hello sky’ instead of getting down to business and doing some purposeful chasing.

The harness holds a block of dye on the tup’s chest so that when the ewe is mounted it leaves a patch of colour on the ewe’s back. The farmer changes the colour of the block after a few days so that progress of the tup’s activity through the flock can be monitored. 

Not all tups like to wear a harness, or perhaps some farmers are more traditional and don’t abide with new fangled gadgets, so raddle is simply a bucket of dye that you mix with fat or vegetable oil and smear on the tup’s chest to achieve the same thing.

My friend from London came up to visit recently and I’d been patiently explaining tups, harnesses and raddle to them as we sat cozy by the fire on a chilly November evening. I could tell by the way they were looking at me that they thought I’d gone bonkers and was spinning some sort of countryside yarn to bamboozle innocent folk from the city. 

Nonetheless they appreciated the log fire because they live in a smokeless zone, and there is something deliciously atavistic about the smell of wood smoke. So, as evening turned to night I went up to bed and left them reading Wuthering Heights, hoping the wind didn’t get up and cause a garden tree to tap on the window.

I fell asleep and was then awoken by a real life drama as my very upset friend from London burst into my bedroom saying they’d been trapped in the parlour downstairs because they couldn’t open the door, and with the windows having security locks, and the thick walls of the house preventing me from hearing them, they’d only managed to escape by finding a letter knife in the bureau and unscrewing the door handle fittings.

I must admit I was rather impressed that a person from London had the practical ability to unscrew a door fitting to enable their escape. Had they been stuck in the room all night they wouldn’t have come to any harm but I understood that it was a bit traumatic. In an old house there are often tricks to opening doors – pull in a bit, twist and push. It’s on my list of jobs to take out the lock to clean it and apply some WD40.

Have you ever been stuck somewhere or in a relationship where you didn’t know how to pull in a bit, twist and push? I certainly have. I didn’t take the handles off in my relationship, it was more of a forced exit climbing out of broken windows clutching half a dozen black bin bags. But that’s another story.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member