Pastoral landscapes

Dyer's shepherding advice fills most of the first book of the poem, and overlaps a little into Books II and III. Although he tends to work backwards and forwards over a few key ideas – the value of improvement and labour, the appropriate response to environment and the need for a modulation between human intervention and natural development – Dyer is fairly systematic, and we may read his advice in a sequential way. Firstly he treats the two variables of terrain (lines 18–124) and weather (lines 125–84), before considering the kinds of sheep suitable to different environments (lines 185–250). There follows a section of veterinary advice (lines 251–320), and a ‘calendar’ of information on different concerns in the shepherd's year (lines 321–554), which ends triumphantly in a pastoral rendering of the shearing festival (lines 555–720). We may examine each of these areas of advice in turn.

Dyer's first task, then, is to establish and comment on the basic variables of farming: terrain and weather. As soon as the invocation to the people and the ‘people's Shepherd’ is completed, the poet launches very positively into the subject of terrain: