Postscript
Sheep's lib
P. J. Kavanagh When we camped outside the walls of Coole Park the thought of Yeats inside, being fed tit-bits by Lady Gregory, made me muse (in the field in my sleeping- bag) on the nature of walls.
They only retain their power as long as those outside believe in it, and those inside believe in it too. Lady Gregory — an excellent biography of whom has just been Published — ceased to believe in her wall because she fell in love with Ireland, invited Ireland inside it, and therefore connived at its inevitable destruction. Ad- mittedly, her wall still stands, enclosing a forestry plantation, but her house is gone.
The notional nature of walls was illus- trated next morning when our little en- campment was investigated by a herd of heavy cows. They meant no harm but there Was danger of our shelters being destroyed. NI) wife, brilliantly resourceful (was it ot
pondering the mystico-political nature of Limits, who should have thought of it?), hastily rigged-up our washing-line on sticks and this flimsy contraption kept out the cows till we had packed up our things.
It was a confidence trick but to play such a thing you have to have confidence, and this is not always easy to maintain. If you go into a field, for instance, on a misty morning, the sheep gather together on the high ground like a cavalry squadron, watching you, and if they charged, you would certainly be overwhelmed. They do not do so, and go on being pushed around and fleeced and eaten, but they only need a leader.
Perhaps they have found one: if not a Lenin, certainly a freedom-fighter. I have been doing battle with him over the last days. He is black, or at least tawny, and horned, and has discovered he can jump over our wall.
This is no flimsy wall put up by me, but a drystone wall built by a shepherd decades ago, still in good repair, which has kept out sheep ever since. Until, that is, this one discovered he could jump it. It was only half a day before a select company of his ewes discovered they could jump it too.
So I began to surround us with barbed- wire. He sat and watched me, his yellow eyes with their strange horizontal pupils particularly hard on the nerves. He re- volved grass in his jaws, as Clint Eastwood chews on his cheroot. When I stood back to admire my work he slowly got to his feet, cheroot, as it were, still in his mouth,
and charged the fence I had just built. It
held. So he moved to another point close by me — there was no mistaking his defiance — and charged again. Then, with an unmistakable gunslinger's saunter, a slow roll of the hips, he went to the gate itself, which is as old as the wall, and shoulder-charged that, side-on, staring me out. Reader, this is no ordinary sheep.
I addressed a few words to him at this point and went in to announce my fortifica- tions to my soppy household, all of whom wanted him to stay inside because he was obviously hungry. But I am made, albeit post-Imperialist, of sterner stuff.
An hour later I was told, with irritating satisfaction, that he was back in the gar- den, this time with two white companions. He raised his head briefly when I approached him, then went on eating.
Next day I was out again, with posts and wire, feeling a fool. For perhaps the day of the sheep has come and I am opposing the tide of history? But a man has to do what he has to do, and there are signs that the victory for the moment is mine; there are lumps of black wool on the wire; but he watches me from the field, baleful.
No, he is back, enough of his wool on the wire to make a liberty-bodice. He is a worthy opponent and begins to inhabit my dreams. An even more shaming admission is that his fleece is so long it is uncertain whether it is a 'he' at all. In a sexist fashion it seems that any creature so rebellious and bloody-minded must be male. Should Clint (it is the only possible name for him) turn out to be a ewe it will be even more disquieting. There are so many more of them.
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