Three Bags Full

Sheep and wool are woven (pun intended) tightly throughout history.  The symbol of the sheep appears in the mythology, religion, economics, entertainment and homemaking of our ancestors.  Even today we find ourselves repeating some of the same traditions or ideas without even thinking about it. 

When these stories are repeated over and over again they become folklore.  They have a deeper meaning and are passed down from generation to generation.  This specific example can be considered oral and traditional folklore.

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

(Onion, Rebecca)

Remember the game telephone?  A word or phrase is passed down a line of people and without fail it becomes a jumbled mess of words.  This poem has gone through a game of telephone lasting hundreds of years.  Many historians hypothesize that this poem is talking about the tax put on sheep and wool in 1549 in England and has been repeated to children ever since. 

King Edward I felt the effects of war on his pocketbook and was the first to instigate a tax on all exported wool.  The taxpayers felt this new burden heavily.  The King was receiving most of the wealth and the rest was going to monasteries which had large herds of sheep and were making enough to balance out the cost of the heavy tax.  The common shepherd was taxed out of all his income.  The taxes began to damage the wool trade market and the wool production market in England was saturated.  It isn’t surprising to learn that the original poem used to go something like this:

 (King Edward)

Bah, Bah, a black Sheep,
Have you any Wool?
Yes merry I Have,
Three Bags full,
Two for my Master,
One for my Dame,
None for the Little Boy
That cries in the lane.

What can be learned from this poem is that the wool industry is here to stay.  Sheep may have to be raised in a certain way to please clients and wool may or may not be “in” next season, but the sheep will keep growing wool and that is a great reason to shake off the past and move forward toward the future of wool production.

 (Minnicks)

P.S. If you are interested in learning more of the history and course of events, I recommend you visit Historic UK’s page on History of the Wool Trade.  It is amazing what one tax can do to an entire Empire.  The link is below in Resources.

Resources:

“History of the Wool Trade.” Historic UK, www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Wool-Trade/.

“King Edward I.” The Association of the Covenant People, 15 Mar. 2016, www.associationcovenantpeople.org/2010/11/king-edward-i/.

Minnicks, Article Written By Margaret. “Being the Black Sheep in the Family.” HubPages, HubPages, 23 Sept. 2017, hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/The-Black-Sheep-of-The-Family.

Onion, Rebecca. “Some Delightfully Scatological and Cruel Nursery Rhymes, From the Oldest Surviving Book of Them.” Slate Magazine, 11 Apr. 2016, www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/04/11/some_of_the_oldest_surviving_published_nursery_rhymes_are_scatological_and.html.