by David Mckellar

Created on: May 22, 2008

A man went to the doctor complaining of insomnia. The doctor gave him a thorough examination, found absolutely nothing physically wrong with him, and then told him, "Listen, if you ever expect to cure your insomnia, you just have to stop taking your troubles to bed with you."
"I know," said the man, "but I can't. My wife refuses to sleep alone."
That is an old joke but sleeplessness is no joke. Until recently you wouldn't find me losing any sleep over insomnia, then one night last week I discovered I, too, couldn't get to sleep. I went to the doctors and he gave me extra strong sleeping pills but I was reluctant to take them in case I became hooked on to them.

That was a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned this to my friend and he gave me a book and told me he found it helpful. The book was called "How to beat insomnia". I read it from cover to cover but when I finished I was still wide awake.
Last Saturday night I decided I would count sheep and see if that would work. I had never done it before. So at ten thirty I climbed into bed, put my head on the pillow and lay there until I got the picture of sheep jumping over this fence and I started to count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One hour later I had counted three thousand six hundred sheep and I was still wide awake.
So I got out of bed and had a smoke to calm me down. While I was smoking I thought to myself when did this method of counting sheep originate? I went onto the internet and found it very interesting. Did you know counting sheep was originally a traditional counting system used by English shepherds to audit their flock? The system was called Yan Tan Tethera.

They used special counting terms and below are one of the many (now archaic) versions:
1....................Yan
2.................. ..Tan
3..................Tether
4.................Meth er
5.....................Pit
6..................Tayter
7..................Layter
8..................Overa
9.. ...............Covera
10..................Dicks
11.... ........Yan-a-Dicks
12............Tan-a-Dicks
13...... ...Tether-a-Dicks
14........Mether-a-Dicks
15......... .......Bumfit
16..........Yan-a-Bumfit
17..........Tan -a-Bumfit
18........Tether-a-Bumfit
19.......Mether-a- Bumfit
20..................Jiggit. 20 sheep are a score'.

By now I was beginning to feel drowsy so I decided to go back to bed and start counting sheep again. Yan, tan, tether, mether, pit, tayter, layter, overa, covera, dicks

The time was 12.30 a.m. By one o'clock I was up to two thousand

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