Regional legend · 3 min read · Set in The Northern Banks ·
The Singing Sheep of Northern Banks
On the high pastures above Northern Banks, the ewes sing a four-part hymn at dusk, and the shepherds say that a flock that sings will never be lost on the fell, but the one that stops singing will walk to the edge of the crag and wait there.
- status: rumor
The high pastures above Northern Banks are a long bare sweep of grass and bracken, cut by stone walls and dotted with old sheep-folds. The flocks have grazed there for six hundred years, and the shepherds who look after them have a custom that outsiders find hard to believe. At dusk, when the light goes off the fell and the ewes are brought down toward the folds, the whole flock sings.
It is not a bleating. It is a hymn, four parts, in a tune that the shepherds say is older than any church. The ewes at the front sing the melody, a rising and falling line of soft, clear notes. The ewes in the middle sing the harmony, a fifth below. The lambs sing the bass, low and steady, and the old rams at the back hold a single sustained note that rolls across the valley like distant thunder. The sound carries for miles on still evenings, and the people in the village say that when the flock is singing well, the wind on the fell drops to nothing, and the stars come out early.
The shepherds call it the Evening Office. They say the flock sings because it is grateful for the day. They say the grass on the high pastures is sweeter for being sung over, and that the ewes know this, and that is why they never stray.
There is another side to the custom, which the shepherds do not discuss with visitors. They say a flock that stops singing has lost its way. It will go quiet at dusk and stand in a tight circle at the top of the fell, facing the crag, and wait. Nobody can call it back. The shepherds have seen it happen, twice in living memory. The second time was in the winter of 1979, when a young shepherd named Tom Ferris took a flock up to the top pasture to bring down a stray ram, and the flock stopped singing in the middle of the Evening Office, and simply stood still, looking toward the edge of the crag.
Tom went up to them. He called and whistled and waved his crook. The ewes did not move. He went round to the back of the flock and began to sing the bass line himself, badly, the way a boy sings in the chapel, and one by one the ewes in the circle began to turn their heads toward him. Then the flock began to walk. Slowly, as if in a dream, they moved toward the edge of the crag. Tom sang louder, and the ewes faltered, and some of them stopped, and the rest began to drift back toward him, and at last the whole flock came back down the hill with Tom walking at its head, still singing, until his voice cracked.
He never sang again in public. He said that the flock had taken his voice for its own, and that the hymn had kept it, and that every evening now, when he lies in bed at the farm, he can hear the sheep on the fell taking up the bass line, very quietly, in his own voice.
On still evenings the shepherds of Northern Banks still bring the flock down singing. The sound drifts across the valley, four parts, rising and falling. And if you listen carefully from the village green, you may hear, under the choir of the ewes, one voice that is not a sheep's, singing the lowest line, steady and sure, as if it has been keeping the tune alone for a very long time.