Free The Ballad of John Clare by Hugh Lupton

spun her round as though she was his partner in some dance that was not of her choosing and did the same to the other side. With a final flourish he snipped the last of the wool from the top of her tail so that the whole fleece fell away from her like a coat.
    There was no mark or cut upon her body for the gentils to get in by, she was pink as a babe. For a moment she stood in amaze, then she bleated and trotted back towards the rest of the flock. John seized her, lifted her up in his arms and carried her over to the empty pen where the tar pot was waiting.
    Farmer Joyce stood watching Jack with an indulgent eye. He came forwards and clapped him on the back and filled his mug with small ale from the barrel against the wall, he pressed it into Jack’s hand. Jack grinned and nodded his thanks and drank.
    As Jack worked, so with varied skill did his lieutenants in the shearing team. Wherever they nicked or cut the creature’s hides with their shears John had to staunch them with tar, so the sheared sheep in their pens bore a speckled testament to the skill – or lack of it – of their barbers. It was John’s job too to roll and tie the fleeces, and to stamp the new-shorn sheep with Farmer Joyce’s mark ‘JJ’. So he laboured and sweated in the June heat as busy as the rest of them.
    Slowly the long day passed, the barn echoed with grunting and clipping and bleating, and with every five sheep shorn there would be the pause for a ‘pull up and sharp’ when shears were whetted and thirsts quenched. As the afternoon dwindled, so did the sheep still wearing their ragged, slomekin fleeces.
    There were only a few waiting in the pens when young Jim Crowson cut the best part of a ewe’s ear off with his shears. It was his first season with the team and he was tiring. His hand slipped and the damage was done. The ewe cried most pitiful and the platform was awash with blood.
    “What the devil!”
    Farmer Joyce strode forwards.
    “I ain’t paying you to butcher my flock.”
    He seized the shears from Jim’s hands and finished the job himself without doing any more damage to the ewe, but by the time he’d finished he was daubed with blood from head to foot like a butcher. He turned to the shearing team and grinned:
    “There, I ain’t altogether lost the knack boys.”
    He nodded to Jim, who grabbed hold of the ewe while John staunched the blood as best he could.
    “You leave the shears to the old hands now.”
    The work continued. Jim helped John. As the clock struck five the last of the sheep was dragged onto the polished platform. By six o’clock the threshing barn had been cleared of all but its heap of tied fleeces.
    John and the rest of the team wasted no time. They washed away the dirt of the day under the pump in the yard. They piled their greasy smocks against the barn door and pulled clean shirts over their shoulders. Bone-weary and famished they made their way round to the back of the farm house.
    Farmer Joyce was waiting for them, scrubbed and fresh-dressed. The great kitchen table had been carried out onto the lawn and covered with a clean white cloth. Benches had been set to either side of it. John Fell the shepherd, Nathaniel Cushion, Will Farrell and a few other farm-hands were already seated. The shearing team sat down beside them. Farmer Joyce turned on his heel and strode into the house. Soon he returned carrying in his hands a large beech-wood bowl filled with frumity. He set it down. Mary Joyce and Kate Dyball followed with pewter bowls and horn spoons, one to each of the team. The men at the table cheered. John tried to catch Mary’s eye as she hurried past him but she seemed to pay him no heed. Farmer Joyce served his men with his own hands, ladling the sweet, thick, spicy, creamy mixture into the bowls
    They supped it down in silence.
    Then a great steaming rack of lamb was fetched and set on the table, with fresh bread, onions, new potatoes, peas, beans, cabbage and thick gravy. The tap was opened