Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 2 (2006), pp. 229–239

The eighteenth-century English georgic poem was a compendious form and incorporated a wealth of information on many subjects, including agriculture. This essay considers an example taken from one of these poems: a description of the fat-tailed 'Carmenian' sheep from John Dyer's The Fleece (1757). Comparing this with portrayals of this type of sheep in other texts, the essay focuses on a curious detail described by Dyer and others, that of how wheeled carts were constructed to protect the long tails of these sheep from harm. This has often been regarded as a traveller's tale, but the essay argues that it is indeed true, and that the story's dubious reputation probably springs from the fact that writers from Rabelais to Goldsmith have used it satirically. 

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