Gabriel O’Rourke's bid to take over George Glenn's flock

Gabriel O’Rourke's bid to take over George Glenn's flock turns the question of who will care for the sheep into a contest over what care entails and who gets to decide. Gabriel takes charge after George’s death, but his practical management and plans for the flock conflict with the sheep’s memory of George and, ultimately, with their right to choose a successor. They first drive Gabriel away by pretending to be ill; later, when the will makes their choice decisive, they gather around Rebecca instead.

George's Legacy of Care

George had been more than the flock’s provider. He spent much of his time in the meadow, arriving early while the sheep were still asleep, urging them to graze as he worked in the vegetable garden or made repairs. In the afternoons, he read aloud to them from books and stories. The sheep did not always understand what he read, but the routine made him a familiar presence in their lives. After his death, their concern over who would bring them hay arose alongside the larger uncertainty of having no shepherd or sheepdog.

The relationship also carried a practical inheritance. George had kept the sheep on a rich Irish pasture and maintained a small vegetable garden behind his caravan. After his death, the flock raided the garden, then noticed that the spade George usually kept there was missing. Later, Gabriel used George’s scythe to cut grass for his own sheep. The old tool’s return to use marked a change in the pasture’s management: what had belonged to George’s ordinary work now served Gabriel’s plan for feeding a different flock.

Gabriel Takes Charge

Gabriel’s arrival narrowed the space available to George’s sheep. He had his dogs gather his own flock at one side of the meadow and put up a wire fence, reducing the area the original flock could use. The sheep found Gabriel’s animals strange and unlike themselves, and resented the boundary even where the grass itself mattered less than the principle of being displaced. Gabriel’s presence therefore challenged both their access to the pasture and their sense that it remained George’s place.

Gabriel’s account of the sheep’s value further widened the divide. He described George’s old breeds as unprofitable: they were not good doers, produced too few lambs, and were a mystery to him in light of what George had intended for them. By contrast, Gabriel’s own sheep ate heavily and could be fattened. When he cut grass for them with George’s scythe, George’s flock watched a human harvest the pasture in a way they found alarming and destructive. Gabriel was feeding animals, but his methods made the flock question whether his understanding of shepherding included their interests at all.

The dispute had a wider human setting. Some locals alleged that George had resisted selling his land despite its value for tourism and claimed that he had made money through nighttime boat visits and activity involving his caravan. Those claims reflect the villagers’ suspicions, not an established account of George’s motives. They nevertheless show that control of the pasture was contested beyond the relationship between shepherd and flock: the land could be viewed as a business opportunity, while the sheep understood it as their home and grazing ground.

The Flock's Resistance

Once the sheep decided Gabriel had to go, they had to find a way to frighten a man who seemed immovable to them. Their thoughts turned to threats they knew—dogs, cars, wolves, and other sources of fear—but none seemed likely to work. Melmoth prompted them to consider the possibility of appearing ill. The knowledge George had given them through his reading, including the unfamiliar vocabulary in a book about sheep diseases, helped Cordelia connect words to a practical plan. The flock rehearsed in the hay barn before putting it into action.

The plan met Gabriel while he was again cutting grass. When his attention turned to Ham and the butcher, the sheep began stumbling and moving with exaggerated difficulty. Gabriel recognized what he took to be scrapie, called his dogs, and promptly drove his own sheep out through a gap in the fence. The animals followed the dogs in orderly fashion; the fenced enclosure was left empty, and Gabriel departed with his flock. The sheep had used the fear of disease not to harm Gabriel but to make him abandon the pasture. Their victory was temporary: Miss Maple expected to see him again, and he later appeared in connection with George’s will.

The Will and the Sheep's Choice

At the will’s reading, Gabriel volunteered to care for the sheep under an arrangement involving regular payments and a final premium if they all died, after which further payments would stop. His offer placed him among the human claimants to the role, but the terms also sharpened the distinction between taking responsibility for a flock and being trusted by it. Rebecca then offered to do the work. The lawyer clarified that the heirs who would choose the shepherd were the sheep themselves, identifying George’s animals by their breeds, including the last Cladoir flock in Ireland.

Gabriel tried to sway the flock by murmuring in Gaelic. Othello stepped forward, looked at him, and turned toward Rebecca; the others followed, clustering around her. The choice was thus made through the flock’s own movement, not through Gabriel’s claim, the lawyer’s authority, or the villagers’ opinions. Rebecca’s connection to George gave the decision an additional personal dimension: in a story she later told the sheep, she described a secret father and daughter who had become estranged after a quarrel, and a letter through which he sought to see her before traveling to Europe. The flock’s choice of Rebecca joined its practical need for a shepherd to the damaged human bond she had with George.

Significance of the Relationship

Gabriel’s bid exposes the difference between managing animals and responding to them as a flock with attachments, memory, and collective judgment. He can fence pasture, cut grass, and direct sheep with trained dogs; the flock, meanwhile, uses what it learned from George’s reading to make its own plan and later exercises the choice the will grants it. George’s care is recalled through repeated, ordinary acts—work in the meadow, repairs, and reading aloud—rather than through a formal claim of ownership.

The contest also reverses the expected direction of authority. Gabriel initially arrives as the human who can organize both flocks and alter the boundaries of the meadow. Yet George’s sheep do not remain passive recipients of his decisions: they make him leave once, then decide whom to accept when the estate’s arrangements put the question to them. Their rejection does not erase Gabriel’s capacity as a shepherd; it establishes that competence and willingness to take over are not enough to secure this flock. Its future depends on a relationship the sheep themselves recognize.