Calling the goats

Calling the goats is the first act of magic performed by the boy Duny, later known as Ged, at the age of seven, an event that reveals his innate power and sets him on the path of wizardry. This seemingly childish incident, in which he unknowingly uses a rhyme of power to summon the village goats, marks the discovery of his latent talent and leads directly to his apprenticeship with the Witch of Ten Alders, the first step on a journey that will take him to the heights of wizardry and the depths of the shadow's realm.

Discovery of Power

Duny, a wild and untutored boy of seven, overheard his aunt, the village witch, chanting a rhyme to call down a goat that had jumped onto a thatched roof. The next day, while herding goats on the meadows of High Fall, he shouted the words he had heard, not knowing their meaning or power: "Noth hierth malk manhiolk han merth han!" The goats came to him immediately, crowding around him in silence, their yellow eyes fixed on him. At first he laughed, but when he repeated the rhyme and the goats pressed closer, he became afraid and tried to run. The goats ran with him, keeping in a tight knot around him, and they all charged down into the village together, the boy weeping and bellowing in the midst of them.

The Witch's Recognition

Villagers ran from their houses to laugh at the boy and swear at the goats. Among them came his aunt, who did not laugh. She spoke a word to the goats, freeing them from the spell, and then took Duny into her hut. There, in the low, windowless, fragrant space hung with drying herbs, she questioned him. When she discovered that he knew nothing of the rhyme's meaning or use, yet had still spellbound the goats to come to him and follow him, she realized he must have the makings of power. Until that moment, as her sister's son, he had been nothing to her, but now she looked at him with a new eye.

The First Lesson and Its Consequences

The witch praised Duny and offered to teach him better rhymes, such as the word that makes a snail look out of its shell or the name that calls a falcon down from the sky. Eager and puffed up with pride, he agreed. She bound his promise with a spell of silence, ensuring he could never speak the word she taught him where another person could hear it. Then, through a ritual of smoke and song, she tested his strength with a binding spell meant to control his speech and bind him to her service. Yet even as the spell bound him, he laughed, and she was a little afraid of his strength. She taught him the true name of the falcon, to which the falcon must come. This was Duny's first step on the way of magery, the way that would lead him at last to hunt a shadow over land and sea to the lightless coasts of death's kingdom. In those first steps, however, it seemed a broad, bright road.

Significance and Legacy

This early event established the pattern of Ged's relationship with power: a natural, untutored talent that could be dangerous when used without knowledge or restraint. The calling of the goats was a raw, uncontrolled demonstration of the power that would later be honed at the School for Wizards on Roke. It also introduced the theme of the True Speech, the language of magic in which things are named with their true names, a concept that would become central to Ged's understanding of wizardry and his ultimate confrontation with the shadow. The incident also gave him his use-name, Sparrowhawk, as the other children began to call him after seeing him often with a bird of prey in the high pastures.