My Sheep Girl: Part 1

I found true love while participating in one of my hometown’s little known, but deeply cherished local traditions.

Based on a post  by SquattingEagle. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.

Island folklore.

Hi, I'm Jethro, I’m nineteen years old and I live with my parents and two younger sisters on one of the small islands off the east coast of Ireland. Although, to be truthful, that’s where I used to live, as I'm currently spending most of my days on the mainland, attending university. But the island will always be home to me and once I’ve graduated, I’ll surely go back. There's just something special about life on a small, isolated island like ours that simply can’t be found anywhere else.

Until the day I’ll return to the island for good, I can only try to visit home as often as I could, which is nowhere near as often as I wanted. You see, merely driving from the campus to the harbor would take at least four hours. If traffic was heavy, five or six hours was more likely. And that was just the first part of the journey. From there on, the only way to the island was by a three-hour boat trip. Weather permitting, this boat shuttled back and forth three times a day. Bad weather, however, was liable to keep the ferry moored at the harbor for days at a time, especially during the stormy autumn and winter months.

While this remoteness was a bit of a pain to me now, the isolation was also what made our island unique, and is therefore essential to the story I am about to tell you.

As you can imagine, our community is largely self-reliant and very much independent of the mainland. It’s been like that for centuries, and even modern technology had not been able to change that. According to the tourist board, our 'picturesque island' houses about 19,000 people, and over 50,000 sheep that roam the fields and forests. Apparently, we are ‘known for our own unique and age-old traditions', most of which are in some way connected to our ‘long lineage of brave fishermen’ and dedicated to ‘the men who sailed stormy seas to bring home nothing but the finest fresh fish’.

While most of our local festivities do indeed involve the sea and its bounties in one way or another, one was quite unlike all the others. That particular day is known as Linus Day, and it is probably the most cherished of all our traditions. Linus Day is celebrated each year on the day of the first new moon in spring and got its name after a nobleman that featured in one of the local legends. It was because of this holiday that I had decided to skip my classes and visit home for a couple of days.

The Legend of Linus.

A long time ago, there lived on the island a man named Linus. As the story goes, he was a wealthy nobleman who had everything his heart could desire. Good looks, lots of money, a luxurious home and scores of friends. His good fortune seemed complete when he met a beautiful girl with a smile that brought sunlight to a rainy day. He quickly fell in love with her and within weeks of their first meeting, he asked her to be his wife. She gladly accepted his proposal and a huge wedding feast was announced. Everyone on the island was invited.

Unknown to Linus, his fair young fiancée wasn't the only one who had fallen for his handsome looks and charming personality. There was another woman, one who was deeply scorned when she learned of his betrothal. On the evening before the wedding, this other woman paid the nobleman an unannounced visit. She warned him that his fiancée was not his true love, and that he should marry her instead. When Linus replied that she was mistaken and that there was nothing she could do to change his mind, the woman burst out in anger. In a fit of rage, she summoned the ancient spirits and put a curse on the bride-to-be.

Before storming out the door, the enraged woman swore that if Linus did not call off the wedding, his bride would be turned into a sheep and be cursed to roam the island among the other animals for the remainder of her life. Only if Linus could prove his love for the girl was true, would he be able to lift the curse.

Linus was a judicious man and in too good a mood to let the woman’s angry ravings ruin his day, and quickly forgot the entire incident. However, the next morning, on the day of the wedding, the young bride was reported missing. The townsfolk searched the whole island and left no stone unturned, but the girl was nowhere to be found. It was then that Linus recalled the woman's angry words, and fear struck his heart. He ran into the fields and scrutinized every herd on the island, desperately looking for his lost fiancée among the sheep. He searched all day, but the animals all looked and sounded the same. Devastated, he returned home.

Before long, people started talking about the nobleman's increasingly eccentric behavior. He hired a dozen huntsmen and ordered them to shoot all the wolves and wild cats on the island. Once that was done, he had all his lands converted into pastures and bought many acres more, only to let them lay unoccupied, except for a few flocks of sheep. He subsequently declared that no-one on the island was to ever lay a finger on the animals and assured the people he would repay all damages caused by them.

Even his friends and family believed he had lost his mind when Linus then sold his wealthy home and became a shepherd, living in a wooden shed. The years went by and the nobleman spent a fortune doing everything he could to protect the island’s ever-growing population of sheep. His resources were diminishing fast, but still he managed to feed and shelter the animals throughout one of the longest and harshest winters the people on the island had ever witnessed. At last springtime arrived, and on the night of the first new moon he lay in his shack, alone, cold and hungry. He had lost absolutely everything, every penny he owned, his mansion and his scores of friends. Everything but his looks and the thousands of animals he cared so deeply for.

On that first moonless night in spring, though he himself was starving, he gave his last piece of bread to one of the sheep that took refuge with him in the shack. Then, as he watched the animal devour the dry morsel of bread, it suddenly shed its thick coat and from under the layer of wool emerged a beautiful young woman. It was none other than his long-lost fiancée, his one true love. By sacrificing absolutely everything he had, Linus had finally managed to lift the curse.

Reunited at last, Linus and his fiancée were married the very next day. The news quickly spread throughout island and the townsfolk now arranged to host a feast for the impoverished nobleman and his beautiful bride. Together they built them a new house in the fields, where the couple lived happily ever after. Linus and his wife had six children, all beautiful girls with blonde, curly hair like that of a newborn lamb, a trait that was still prevalent on our island to this day.

As the story goes, it was this legendary wedding feast that the people hosted for the nobleman and his wife that evolved into the local holiday now known as Linus Day, and it is still dedicated to that ancient couple's true love.

Although you won't find it mentioned in any of the tourist board's leaflets, the legend of Linus was also linked to another, more obscure, but equally cherished tradition. This tradition was commonly referred to as Sheep-shaggin’.

On the evening before Linus Day, all the young and unmarried women would dress up as sheep and hide in the woods or fields. Then, as soon as the sun had set, the men would go out as well. If they were in a relationship, it was their task to find their girlfriends and if they did, their love was supposedly destined to be true.

The festival of sheep-shaggin’ was arguably even better for those who were not in a committed relationship. If you were a single guy, tradition allowed you to go into the forest and have sex with as many dressed-up girls as you could find. All night long, all single and willing females were considered fair game. And better still, the complete darkness of the new moon and absence of electric lights practically ensured complete anonymity, if that's what you desired. It was understood that even a total loser could get lucky on sheep-shaggin’.

Me, I was not a total loser and furthermore, I was in a serious, albeit waning, relationship. This night, like every other sheep-shaggin’ for the last three years, my girlfriend Amanda was somewhere out there waiting for me, but tonight I had not been able to find her. I had been searching the dark woods and desolate fields for ages and looked for her in all the places that used to mean something to us, yet I was still wandering alone. I had run into several dressed-up girls in various locations, but none of the lambs proved to be my true love.

In a way, it was indicative of our relationship; I just did not know what Mandy was thinking anymore. After we finished high school almost a year ago, I left the island to attend college while she chose to stay behind and find a job. Although we telephoned almost every day and I did my best to be with my girlfriend as much as possible, our relationship had been going downhill ever since. Especially over the last few months she had changed, becoming more and more detached from me. Whatever remained between us now was purely physical