Counting Sheep

Words for numbers --- English --- French and German --- Songs --- Counting sheep

This is an account of counting sheep in Northumberland:

"Counting livestock was by the score, and even in the 1960s some of the old Northumberland shepherds still used the old language - een, tean, thether and so on. The shepherd would count to 20 (a score). At this point a finger would be clenched and the count started again. Thus an accurate count could be kept to 600, using the fingers of one hand for the scores, and the fingers of the other hand for the hundreds. There would be very few flocks exceeding 400 in Northumberland."

I am not sure where this language comes from - some of the words are similar to Welsh, but not others.

Digit	Number	Shepherds number	Welsh number
1	one	een	un
2	two	tean	dau (m) / dwy (f)
3	three	thether	tri (m) / tair (f)
4	four	mether	pedwar (m) / pedair (f)
5	five	pimp	pump
6	six	citer	chwech
7	seven	liter	saith
8	eight	ova	wyth
9	nine	dova	naw
10	ten	dic	deg

These counts varies around Britain. Here is a count to twenty from Borrowdale.

1 - 5	Yan	Tyan	Tethera	Methera	Pimp
6 - 10	Sethera	Lethera	Hovera	Dovera	Dick
11 - 15	Yan-a-dick	Tyan-a-dick	Tethera-dick	Methera-dick	Bumfit
16 - 20	Yan-a-bumfit	Tyan-a-bumfit	Tethera Bumfit	Methera Bumfit	Giggot

For more information, including other versions of the count, see: