H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 3 0mannered; he is also remarkably obtuse. He does not see that
insulting the sheep to its face is blatantly not in his interests. He is
clearly something of a sheepist, with an odiously superior attitude
to our ovine colleagues. Perhaps he has fallen victim to a vulgar
stereotype, assuming that sheep are too stupid to mind being sent
up in this way.
If so, he has evidently miscalculated. For the insult does not pass
unnoticed. ‘Yes,’ replies the sheep, ‘I do indeed have some wool –
three full bags of it, in fact. That’s one for the master, one for the
dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane. But none
for you, you impudent bastard.’ The last words, of course, are
merely implied. To pronounce them openly would be to under-
mine the sheep’s cleverly calculated pose of genial co- operation.
He answers the speaker’s question readily and at some length, but
not at all in a way that the questioner is likely to find gratifying. Part
of what the beast does, in fact, is deliberately misunderstand the
question as an academic one. He cunningly refuses to pick up the
speaker’s implied meaning (‘May I have some wool?’). It is as
though one were to ask someone in the street ‘Do you have the
time?’, and he were to reply ‘Sure’ and walk on. He has answered
your question but failed to draw the correct inference from it.
In this sense, the poem illustrates a vital aspect of human
meaning, namely the role played by inference and implication. To
ask your guest ‘Would you care for a cup of coffee?’ is to indicate
your readiness to give her one. Imagine being asked this by someone
and then finding, when the coffee failed to appear, that it was
merely an academic enquiry, along the lines of ‘How many seam-
stresses were there in sixteenth- century Wales?’ or ‘How are you
doing?’ ‘How are you doing?’ is not an invitation to recount your
recent medical history in grisly detail.