Sir Ritchfield

Sir Ritchfield is the elderly lead ram of George’s flock, a figure whose authority rests as much on remembered rules and losses as on his standing among the sheep. Hard of hearing and increasingly forgetful, he nevertheless sees clearly, judges events with blunt precision, and gives voice to the flock’s deepest fear: that a sheep who leaves may never return. His relationship with Melmoth makes that fear personal, and the eventual return of his twin brother transforms the rule he has enforced into a more generous one.

Identity and Authority

Sir Ritchfield is already described as no longer young, rather hard of hearing, and possessed of a poor memory, although his eyes remain good. The contrast matters: the flock’s senior ram is not an unchanging repository of knowledge. His memory can fail him, but he retains the authority to interpret danger and to speak in terms the others recognize as binding. When the sheep discover George lying cold and lifeless beside the hay barn, Ritchfield rejects the suggestion that George might have died of illness: spades are not an illness. The remark is terse, practical, and exact, matching the visible evidence of the tool driven into the shepherd’s body.

His authority also appears in quieter acts of restraint. When Mopple the Whale approaches the herbs growing at George’s Place, Ritchfield suddenly blocks his way and tells him that the young must sometimes be made to respect their elders or they will end up like Melmoth. The warning is not simply about manners: it invokes the flock’s most frightening example of a sheep who went away. Ritchfield’s position is built from that history, even when the younger sheep cannot fully understand what it has cost him.

Melmoth and the Rule Against Leaving

Melmoth’s disappearance is the defining absence in Ritchfield’s life. The flock knows the story as a warning mothers whisper to lambs, but does not like to tell or hear it. Ritchfield breaks that silence with certainty: Melmoth is dead, he says, because George went looking for him with the butcher’s dogs and came back smelling of death. Ritchfield remembers waiting alone by George’s caravan on the fifth night, smelling death himself. From that experience he draws the rule, repeated throughout the story: no sheep may leave the flock.

The rule carries more than a practical warning. In speaking to Heather after she longs to possess a beautiful object, Ritchfield distinguishes between Things that can be owned and living beings who belong in relation to one another. A sheep can have a lamb or a flock, he says, but the living also have claims on those who would possess them. The flock is meant to keep together, ewes, lambs, and rams. His argument briefly becomes a confused lament, as though the rule that protects the flock also traps him inside his own old grief. Willow’s intervention, that having Things is bad, deepens the scene’s distinction between possession and companionship without undoing Ritchfield’s insistence on the flock’s bonds.

His certainty about leaving is not always expressed as a public command. Near George’s Place, he stands in the dark watching Zora, then turns his gaze toward the dolmen and whispers that he is gone. Zora cannot be sure whom he means, though she believes he means George. The moment reveals how closely Ritchfield’s attention remains fixed on absence, and how the old ram’s quieter voice can emerge beneath his customary bellowing.

Memory, Vision, and Change

Ritchfield’s memory trouble becomes dramatically visible when Miss Maple encounters what seems to be two versions of him facing one another on George’s Place. One has crows; the other does not. They lower their horns, clash, and separate. The Ritchfield with crows says, “I did dare,” and the other answers, “You did dare.” The exchange gives the scene the shape of an encounter between Ritchfield and a memory he cannot comfortably hold. He then repeats that no sheep may leave and that George came back smelling of death, before turning toward the cliffs in distress and muttering that he should have kept his mouth shut. The crows rise, and only one Ritchfield remains, shaggy and smelling like a flock of half sheep. The scene does not explain the experience as an ordinary conversation; instead, it makes his fractured recollection visible while keeping his attachment to Melmoth at its center.

The flock later considers replacing Ritchfield as lead ram. Rameses approaches to make the change clear, but Ritchfield interrupts him. Addressing him by his short horns, Ritchfield says that the day is clear, that he is looking for his memories, and that no sheep will get him off the pasture if he does not want to go. Yet he also recognizes that he is no longer a lead ram and tells the flock that they could do with being clearer themselves. His answer refuses a simple deposition while acknowledging that the old role no longer defines him. The flock retreats toward the dolmen, wary of criticizing him after Maude observes that he heard them.

Melmoth’s Return and a Revised Rule

When Melmoth returns, Ritchfield changes. The flock finds him more cheerful and playful, almost as daring as a young ram, and he stays close to his twin. He no longer seems interested in being lead ram. The transformation is measured not by a speech renouncing the past but by a revised version of the rule that had governed it: a sheep may not leave the flock unless that sheep comes back again. The exception does not erase the danger Ritchfield remembers. It makes return, rather than permanent separation, the condition by which the flock can absorb what once seemed impossible.

The change also alters the meaning of Melmoth’s story for the other sheep. Later, as small groups exchange tales of their experiences, Ritchfield repeats the new rule and Melmoth answers snidely that sometimes being alone is an advantage. Heather calls it a love story. Their contrasting responses show that the twins’ reunion has become a story the flock can tell in more than one way: as a reaffirmation of belonging, but also as evidence that leaving and solitude do not have only one ending.

The Ram’s Continuing Place in the Flock

Ritchfield remains part of the flock’s communal work even as the question of leadership shifts around him. During the sheep’s staged reenactment of George’s death, he takes on the arduous task of chewing sorrel to strengthen the smell on the rag used to represent Beth. The practical role suits the character: his authority is not only a matter of issuing rules, but of contributing to the flock’s collective attempt to make human actions legible through sheep senses.

His arc therefore turns on a change in how he carries memory. At first, Melmoth’s absence supports an absolute prohibition: no sheep may leave. After the reunion, Ritchfield keeps the rule’s protective force but adds the possibility that a lost sheep can return and be welcomed. The old ram remains marked by age and lapses of memory, yet his ending is not defined by the loss of authority alone. Closeness to Melmoth, renewed playfulness, and the altered rule make room for a life in which the flock’s past still matters without dictating that separation must be final.