Seeing the first lamb of spring
Seeing the year's first newborn lamb is a classic sign that the season has turned, and old farming lore watched for it closely. One rule from western Britain warned against counting the lambs before the season was over.
What it may mean
To a passerby, the first lamb of the year is pure charm: wet and wobbly, standing on legs too long for it within an hour of being born. To a shepherd it is also the first number of the season, and the temptation is to start counting at once. An old superstition of western Great Britain said you should never count your sheep and lambs until the season was over, or many would die. Behind it sits plain experience: lambing runs for weeks, cold nights and difficult births come late as well as early, and a tally made in the first days says little about the last. People count early too, when a new job, a garden or a savings plan is only a few days old, and the early number tends to set the mood more than it deserves. A lamb in the field can remind you to let a season run before you add it up.
Depending on how you saw it
A black lamb among white ones
Irish lore held that a black first lamb of the season foretold mourning clothes for someone in the family within a year. Black lambs are simply the result of a recessive gene, and many shepherds like having one or two. Which odd one out in your life became a favorite?
An orphan lamb with a new mother
When a ewe loses her lamb and another lamb loses its mother, shepherds often try to pair them, making the orphan smell like the ewe's own so that she will accept it. Scent and voice do the rest within a few days. Who once made room for you as if you had always belonged?
Matching numbers on ewes and lambs
Many shepherds spray the same number on a ewe and her lambs so that mothers and young can be matched at a glance in a crowded field. The paint wears off by summer, once nobody needs it. Which temporary system helped you through a busy season, and did you let it go afterward?
Why it happens in nature
In much of Britain, Ireland and North America, lambs are born from late winter into spring, timed so they grow on fresh grass. A healthy lamb usually stands within an hour of birth and finds the udder soon after, and ewe and lamb learn each other's smell and voice in the first hours, which lets them find each other in a crowded field.
What folk beliefs say
Ireland
They say in Ireland, a 1903 collection reports, that if the first lamb of the season is born black, it foretells mourning garments for some member of the family within a year.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 691. View the page
Western Britain
A superstition of western Great Britain held that you should never count your sheep and lambs until the end of the season, or many of them would die.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 887. View the page
To reflect on
Which new effort of yours are you tallying before it has had a fair season to grow?