Peter Costello
Rosamund Yong with one
of her farm friends The Secret Life of Cows
Rosamund Young, with a foreword by Alan Bennett
Faber and Faber. £9.99 / €11.99
The Wisdom of Sheep and Other Animals
Rosamund Young
Faber and Faber, £7.99 / €9.50
Here in Ireland we are well aware of the importance of cattle to our history – is not the Gaelic word for road ‘the Cow’s Way’. They fill the fields of rural Ireland wherever there is lush green grass, just as flocks of sheep spread across the edible pastures of the hills.
They are a crucial part of our history, ancient and modern. But as these days most people seem to be reared and live far from any personal experience of such rural regions, it is doubtful if many still experience the rural sights of cattle, sheep and hens which Rosamund Young fills her illuminating little books with.
I was struck too by the parallel of much that she writes in these two books with the sort of scenes that fill the lives of our early Celtic saints.
Helen Waddell, the Belfast poet and scholar, filled her charming 1934 book Beasts and Saints with stories from both Irish and European sources, with wonderful wood engravings by Robert Gibbings, Irish writer and artist being well matched.
But also relevant is much that we read about in the lives of other saints, especially Francis of Assisi. The love of people for animals, and of animals for people, can be very strange to observe. Even wolves come within the pale of affection. “Perfect love,” as we are told, “casteth out fear…” and this applies to animals as well as people.
Rosamund Young and her family have run Kite’s Nest farm in Worcestershire. There they let their animals and hens lead the lives they want and need to live, coming and going and feeding as they want, and not as is convenient for the owners. They are their own people so to speak.
She finds what is invisible in the course of forced animal rearing is the fact that each animal and bird has its own particular character, just as humans have.
(Vegans might like to note that in Genesis I:29, we are told that God gives man the animals to rule over. But that “every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” Note, the animals are not classed as food, here at least!)
She also finds hens a great deal less “bird brained” than many people can imagine. The urgent constant activity of hens she sees as also a mode of life to be followed.
Alan Bennett confesses that when he saw her first book he thought the title was a joke, only to realise that it was far from that, but in fact seemed to open out a new sense of the nature of the animate world of which we are part.
These two books can be warmly recommended, and as with the Celtic saints, there are lessons there to be learned about new ways to live that will change how you see animate creation.
(Reading this over, these books might also be recommended to those running nursing homes: perhaps they need to let their residents “out to play” more than they do.)