Three Bags Full (A Sheep Detective Story)

“Engagingly narrated by Miss Maple, Cloud, Othello, Maude, Mopple, and the rest of the flock, Three Bags Full is humorous, mythical, philosophical, endearing, and in a magical way, very believable, thanks to the author’s depth of description.”

In the small coastal village of Glennkill, Ireland, George Glenn tends his flock of sheep in lush meadows steeped in the scent of sea air and clover. Seeming to shun the company of humans in favor of his sheep, George shows his devotion to his flock in many ways, including reading aloud to them every afternoon from romance and detective novels.

But all is not as it seems, and one morning the sheep find George’s body lying near their hay barn with a spade run right through the middle of him. Here the author of Three Bags Full, Leonie Swann, gives us the first of many delightful sheep conversations—in this case, what to do about their dead shepherd.

“‘He wasn’t a specially good shepherd,’ said Heather, who was still not much more than a lamb and still bore George a grudge for docking her beautiful lamb’s tail at the end of last winter.”

From the wooliest sheep, Cloud, “Exactly! He had sweaters made from foreign wool sent from Norway—it’s a disgrace! What other shepherd would insult his own flock like that?”

After a long discussion they agree that good shepherds wouldn’t dock their tails, keep sheepdogs, or wear clothing made from Norwegian wool, but they ultimately concede there’s no such thing as a perfect shepherd. Despite any shortcomings, George did give them good fodder and read stories to them, and they will miss that, so they decide to find out who murdered him.

“We owe old George that. If a fierce dog took one of our lambs he always tried to find the culprit. Anyway, he was our shepherd. No one had a right to stick a spade in him. That’s wolfish behavior. That’s murder.”

Armed with a limited knowledge of humans gleaned from listening to George read them stories the sheep set out to find his murderer by eavesdropping on human conversations. They hide in the pasture and in the village listening for clues. Their observations are charmingly naïve and often heartwarming.

When they hear a priest say, “The Lord is my shepherd,” the sheep think someone named Lord is the shepherd of the human flock. And when he invites people into church by saying, “Welcome to God’s house,” the sheep assume the priest’s name is God. When they delve deeper they begin thinking that God might be the murderer.

“I still think it was God who killed him, said Mopple, with his mouth full.

“Why would he do a thing like that?” asked Maude.

“God moves in mysterious ways,” explained Cloud. “He says so himself.”

Engagingly narrated by Miss Maple, Cloud, Othello, Maude, Mopple, and the rest of the flock, Three Bags Full is humorous, mythical, philosophical, endearing, and in a magical way, very believable, thanks to the author’s depth of description.

“The heat had hunted old smells out of all the corners. A young mouse who had died under the wooden planks last summer. George sweating as he forked hay through the hatch in the roof and down on them, a fragrant shower. A screw that had fallen out of his radio and still smelled the way it used to, of metal and music.”

Three Bags Full is also sprinkled with sheep wisdom that even humans can understand. George Glenn’s sheep measure their own souls by their superior olfactory cues and conversely, they believe that humans must have smaller souls because of their weaker sense of smell.

More sheep logic ensues as they worry about the declining memory of an older ram.

“If it’s a hole in his memory we ought to stop it up with more memories,” said Cordelia. “You stop up a hole in the earth with more earth.”

“But you don’t stop up a rat-hole with more rats,” said Cloud.

“You could,” Cordelia insisted, “if they were very fat rats.”

As George’s sheep browse the human realm for answers to the mystery of their shepherd’s murder we see and feel a world we recognize, but at the same time their innocence allows us to notice things in a refreshingly different way.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being stared down by a flock of sheep you well know their unflinching gaze and deep curiosity, tinged, perhaps, with just a bit of disdain for two-legged intruders. And if you’ve never put yourself in a sheep pasture before, you should. But until then grazing the pages of Three Bags Full will make you believe you are there!