THE VIDEO SHELF · sheep-counting folk song
Jake Thackray 'Molly Metcalfe'
Jake Thackray performs the folk song Molly Metcalfe, which opens with an explanation of the traditional northern English sheep-counting system (yan, tan, tethera). It is a short, witty piece of British folk songwriting.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it in threads about sheep-counting systems as the famous song that explains them.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- TallPiler
- Topic
- sheep-counting folk song
- Format
- music
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2013–2024
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Have you seen the famous folk song that starts with an explanation of these? Jake Thackray 'Molly Metcalfe' [VIDEO]
nkurz on Hacker News · 2022-01
In Yan tan tethera: A Celtic sheep-counting systemIt's fair game, since it didn't get much discussion, but if you click on 'past' in the list of links below the title, you'll see a couple times this has already been posted. But since it's here again, I'll again recommend the Youtube video of …
nkurz on Hacker News · 2022-12
In Yan Tan TetheraHere's Jake Thackray singing a song with this in it. Wonderful stuff. [VIDEO] . Edit: Just noticed this is referenced in the article. Sorry.
I_complete_me on Hacker News · 2022-12
In Yan tan tethera pethera pimp – an old system for counting sheep
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.