The Story of the Lucky Woolly Egg
Once upon a time, there was a shepherd named Seamus O’Malley. He lived on the Isle of Dingle, where he had a little farm. Seamus mainly raised sheep, but he also had a small number of chickens.
Seamus had seen many crazy things happen over the years, but none stranger than the story of the Lucky Woolly Egg. About the year 1792, Seamus went into his little cottage to have some tea after a hard day of sheep sheering. As he was sitting down in his favorite armchair, Seamus heard a ruckus in the chicken coop. He hastily ran outside to see what the commotion was, and found that a wolf had eaten one of his prized chickens. Seamus was devastated. He latched the coop back up so that the wolves wouldn’t be able to take any more of the chickens, and walked sadly back inside.
The next morning, when the chickens were out in the yard scraping their talons, Seamus found that one of the eggs from his late chicken was missing. He frantically scrambled around the chicken coop looking in every nook and cranny for it. But he could not find it anywhere.
A few days later, Seamus was in the barn trying to clean out the sheep stalls. But one of his ewes wouldn’t move. Her name was Patty, and she’d always had trouble having lambs. Because she couldn’t have babies, Patty was the outcast of the herd. All the other ewes would make fun of her. They would brag about how many lambs they had, and always seemed to find a way to point out that Patty had never had one of her own.
Seamus couldn’t get Patty out of the stall. He tried and tried, but she sat stubbornly in the corner and wouldn’t budge an inch. He finally gave up trying to get her out, and went over to pat her on the head. As he patted the ewe, Seamus saw that there was an odd looking ball of wool by Patty’s belly. He tried to pick it up, but Patty baaa-ed at him as though he was not allowed to lay a finger on it. He coaxed her to let him see it, and found that it was an egg with wool felted around it.
Seamus realized this must be the egg that had gone missing. Patty had taken it in, as her own baby. She knew she’d be too heavy to sit on the egg to keep it warm. So Patty had wrapped it in extra wool-scraps lying around the farm from the sheering to keep it warm.
Seamus was so proud of Patty that he didn’t take the woolly egg away from her. In a few days the egg hatched, revealing the most beautiful woolly chick. Patty named the chick Gladys. When the chick grew up and laid her first egg, it was surrounded by a colorful layer of wool. When Seamus picked it up he felt an instant jolt of good luck run through him.
Nobody knows why, but Gladys has kept on producing eggs that bring people good luck to this day.
Written by Lucy, Alishia, and Laura with original art by Laura.