The Exotic Sheep Jig

[sovay]

(Courtesy of fleurdelis28.)

Me: I don't know with whom else I can share a list of Shetland terms that includes a word for hermaphroditic sheep . . . Why? How many hermaphroditic sheep are born in the Shetland Islands? Is there something I've missed?

fleurdelis28: How often does it have to happen, I guess, before you need a word for it? We have a word for the general phenomenon; when there are more sheep than people, maybe that's the chief place you know it from...

I remember reading in an NYTimes article that in Nepal or somewhere similar that hermaphrodites form a separate caste consisting entirely of exotic dancers, or something like that.

Now I'm picturing hermaphroditic dancing sheep...

Me: *goes blind*

. . . I'm just curious why a simple adjectival phrase doesn't suffice.

fleurdelis28: Well, if you only ever see it in sheep, why would you need an adjective?

Me: I meant, like "Hermaphroditic Sheep" in English. When you have single words for something, it tends to mean you want to be able to say it quickly and often.

fleurdelis28: Well, yeah, but we also have experience with hermaphrodites of other species.  If we only ever saw it in sheep, and raised an awful lot of cumulative sheep, we might have a word, even if the total number of hermaphroditic sheep were relatively low.  Maybe they have a nice, dire superstition about it...

"The Tale of the Hermaphroditic Sheep...it came at dusk, as the tree branches scratched eerily in the cold north wind.  We shuddered in the light of the campfire.  It did an exotic sheep jig and left.  We blinked really, really hard."

Look, I'm highly amused . . .

Comments

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I should not be laughing this hard at something I said...

And then you said, "Fair enough: it's not so much a word for 'hermaphrodite' in the general sense, then, as the word for 'aw, man, it's another one of those weird sheep.'"

Which also makes me laugh.

[captainbutler.livejournal.com]

The real issue is not whether or not there is a need for this word but whether it can be played during a game of scrabble.

[sovay]

If the Sumerian concept of me is legal for Scrabble, I can't see how a hermaphroditic Shetland sheep wouldn't be.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if you think about it, even in English we have separate words for ewe and ram. They're anglo-saxon; I think "hermaphrodite" only enters the language in the seventeenth century. So you might not have a word for "hermaphrodite" in shetland norse, and so might want a simple noun (on the lines of ewe and ram) to describe the phenomenon when it appeared in sheep. Especially in a culture where, as you say, they outnumber people. --Josh

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Laughing out LOUD. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

I suppose one aspect of the hermaphroditic sheep would be that they'd pose a real problem for people who wanted to breed the things. I mean, if your neighbor happens to have irregular genitalia... well, that's really his/her business, and it would be rude for you to mention it, so you don't need a word. But if you're planning next year's lambs, and you'd love lambs out of that sheep over there, but it's a hwini, then that's something you need to be able to communicate to your fellow shephards.

(Also, there are some wonderful words on this list. Breekbridder. I've needed that one...)

--R

[(Anonymous)]

Only just noticed that Tolkien used "etterkap" (slightly modified) in The Hobbit. That's Tolkien for you... --J

[sovay]

"Attercop, Attercop, down you drop . . ." I hadn't even spotted that one. That's wonderful.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

It's a sister word to "cobweb." "Atter" is venom.

Nine