4 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



strong, and so to the Greek rome, strength. The 

 ram is thus the strong, and so the butting animal ; 

 from which we have the verb to ram. The Latin 

 aries is doubtless also from the same root ; but the 

 Hebrew ay^/ appears to be quite distinct. 



Ewe, the name of the female of the sheep, 

 comes from the Anglo-Saxon eower, the Old Eng- 

 lish eowu, the Friesian ei, and the Icelandic or Old 

 Norse a, all of which are equivalent to the above- 

 mentioned awi, awis, and avi, and thus primarily 

 denote a sheep of either sex. The Middle Dutch 

 oie or eie and the modern Dutch ooi, together with 

 the Old High German ouwe, au, or ou, are akin. 

 On the other hand, the Hebrew rakhal seems to be 

 derived from a totally different root. The Swedish 

 is tacka. 



Lamb, a young sheep, is a word common, with 

 slight difference of spelling in some cases, to Eng- 

 lish, Anglo-Saxon, Swedish, Icelandic, and Gothic, 

 and is equivalent to the German lamm and the Old 

 Teutonic lamboz or lambiz. That it is akin to the 

 Greek amnos, the Latin agnus, the Italian agnello, 

 and the French agneau, may be regarded as certain ; 

 but according to the Century Dictionary no sure 

 extra-Teutonic affinities of the word have been 

 found. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that 

 lamb is connected with the Welsh Ham, signifying 

 a skip or frisk, which is itself apparendy akin to 

 the Hindi lela, a lamb, believed to be a derivative 



