Yan tan tethera

Yan Tan Tethera or yan-tan-tethera is a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Yorkshire, Northern England and some other parts of Britain. The words may be derived from numbers in Brythonic Celtic languages such as Cumbric which had died out in most of Northern England by the sixth century, but they were commonly used for sheep counting and counting stitches in knitting until the Industrial Revolution, especially in the fells of the Lake District. Though most of these number systems fell out of use by the turn of the 20th century, some are still in use.

Origin and development

Sheep-counting systems ultimately derive from Brythonic Celtic languages, such as Cumbric; Tim Gay writes: “ heep-counting systems from all over the British Islesall compared very closely to 18th-century Cornish and modern Welsh". It is impossible, given the corrupted form in which they have survived, to be sure of their exact origin. The counting systems have changed considerably over time. A particularly common tendency is for certain pairs of adjacent numbers to come to resemble each other by rhyme (notably the words for 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 6 and 7, or 8 and 9). Still, multiples of five tend to be fairly conservative; compare ''bumfit'' with Welsh , in contrast with standard English ''fifteen''.

Use in sheep counting

Like most Celtic numbering systems, they tend to be vigesimal ( based on the number twenty), but they usually lack words to describe quantities larger than twenty; this is not a limitation of either modernised decimal Celtic counting systems or the older ones. To count a large number of sheep, a shepherd would repeatedly count to twenty, placing a mark on the ground, or move a hand to another mark on a shepherd's crook, or drop a pebble into a pocket to represent each score (e.g. 5 score sheep = 100 sheep).

Knitting

Their use is also attested in a "knitting song" known to be sung around the middle of the nineteenth century in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, beginning "yahn, tayhn, tether, mether, mimph".

Modern usage

The counting system has been used for products sold within Northern England and Yorkshire, such as prints, beers, alcoholic sparkling water (hard seltzer in U.S.), and yarns, as well as in artistic works referencing the region, such as Harrison Birtwistle's 1986 opera '' Yan Tan Tethera''.

Jake Thackray's song "Old Molly Metcalfe" from his 1972 album Bantam Cock uses the Swaledale "Yan Tan Tether Mether Pip" as a repeating lyrical theme.

Garth Nix used the counting system to name the seven Grotesques in his novel Grim Tuesday.

''Yan'' or ''yen''

The word ''yan'' or ''yen'' for 'one' in Cumbrian, Northumbrian, and some Yorkshire dialects generally represents a regular development in Northern English in which the Old English long vowel <ā> was broken into , and so on. This explains the shift to ''yan'' and ''ane'' from the Old English , which is itself derived from the Proto-Germanic . Another example of this development is the Northern English word for 'home', ''hame'', which has forms such as ''hyem, yem'' and ''yam'' all deriving from the Old English .

Systems by region

Yorkshire and Lancashire

Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and County Durham

Southwest England

Cumberland and Westmorland

Wilts, Scots, Lakes, Dales and Welsh

''Note: Scots here means " Scots" not " Gaelic"''

Numerals in Brythonic Celtic languages

See also

* Counting-out game
* Lace tells

References

Further reading

*Rawnsley, Hardwicke Drummond (1987) "Yan tyan tethera: counting sheep". Woolley: Fleece Press {{ISBN, 0948375175

External links

Breton numerals

Carol Justus's use of this numbering system to explain pre-decimal counting systems





Sheep farming in the United Kingdom
Languages of the United Kingdom
British English
Celtic words and phrases
English words and phrases
Numeral systems