Sometimes the Sheep are brought up by hand at home. "House-lamb," as we call it, is even now common, and the practice of house-feeding peculiar in the old Scriptural times.
We have an allusion to this custom in the well-known parable of the prophet Nathan: "The poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter" (2 Sam. xii. 3). A further, though less distinct, allusion is made to this practice in Isaiah vii. 21: "It shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep."
How the Sheep thus brought up by hand were fattened may be conjectured from the following passage in Mr. D. Urquhart's valuable work on the Lebanon:—
"In the month of June, they buy from the shepherds, when pasturage has become scarce and sheep are cheap, two or three sheep; these they feed by hand. After they have eaten up the old grass and the provender about the doors, they get vine leaves, and, after the silkworms have begun to spin, mulberry leaves. They purchase them on trial, and the test is appetite. If a sheep does not feed well, they return it after three days. To increase their appetite they wash them twice a day, morning and evening, a care they never bestow on their own bodies.
"If the sheep's appetite does not come up to their standard, they use a little gentle violence, folding for them forced leaf-balls and introducing them into their mouths. The mulberry has the property of making them fat and tender. At the end of four months the sheep they had bought at eighty piastres will sell for one hundred and forty, or will realize one hundred and fifty.
"The sheep is killed, skinned, and hung up. The fat is then removed; the flesh is cut from the bones, and hung up in the sun. Meanwhile, the fat has been put in a cauldron on the fire, and as soon as it has come to boil, the meat is laid on. The proportion of the fat to the lean is as four to ten, eight 'okes' fat and twenty lean. A little salt is added, it is simmered for an hour, and then placed in jars for the use of the family during the year.
"The large joints are separated and used first, as not fit for keeping long. The fat, with a portion of the lean, chopped fine, is what serves for cooking the 'bourgoul,' and is called Dehen. The sheep are of the fat-tailed variety, and the tails are the great delicacy."
This last sentence reminds us that there are two breeds of Sheep in Palestine. One much resembles our ordinary English Sheep, while the other is a very different animal, being to the ordinary Sheep what the greyhound is to the rough terrier. It is much taller on its legs, larger-boned, and long-nosed. Only the rams have horns, and they are not twisted spirally like those of our own Sheep, but come backwards, and then curl round so that the point comes under the ear. The great peculiarity of this Sheep is the tail, which is simply prodigious in point of size, and is an enormous mass of fat. Indeed, the long-legged and otherwise lean animal seems to concentrate all its fat in the tail, which, as has been well observed, appears to abstract both flesh and fat from the rest of the body. So great is this strange development, that the tail alone will sometimes weigh one-fifth as much as the entire animal. A similar breed of Sheep is found in Southern Africa and other parts of the world. In some places, the tail grows to such an enormous size that, in order to keep so valuable a part of the animal from injury, it is fastened to a small board, supported by a couple of wheels, so that the Sheep literally wheels its own tail in a cart. It has been thought by some systematic naturalists that this variety is a distinct species, and the broad-tailed breeds of Sheep have, in consequence, been distinguished by several names. For example, the present variety is called Ovis laticaudatus by several authors, Ovis laticauda platyceros by another, and Ovis cauda obesa by another. The broad-tailed Sheep of Tartary is called Ovis steatopyga. Another author calls it Ovis macrocercus; and the broad-tailed Sheep of Southern Africa is called Ovis Capensis. Yet they are in reality one and the same variety of the common domesticated Sheep, differing in some particulars according to the conditions in which they are placed, but having really no specific distinction. It is, by the way, from the wool of the unborn broad-tailed Sheep that the much-prized Astrachan fur is made.
The various Scriptural writers seem never to have noticed the difference between the breeds of Sheep; the names that are employed denoting the different ages and sexes of the Sheep, but having no reference to the breed.
For example, the word "Tâleh" signifies a very young sucking lamb, such as is mentioned in 1 Sam. vii. 9: "And Samuel took a sucking lamb (Tâleh), and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord." The same word is used in Isa. lxv. 25: