Lamb's tales

摘要

Rumours began to circulate in the Middle Ages. Far away in the land of the Tartars lived a thing that was neither plant nor animal, but both. It was called a borametz. None of those who told the tale had actually seen it, but they'd always met a man who had. In some versions of the story the "vegetable lambs" were the fruits of a tree that grew from a round seed like that of a melon. When the fruits ripened, they burst open to reveal tiny lambs with soft white fleeces that the natives used to make fine cloth. In other tellings, the seed gave rise to a lamb that grew on a stalk rooted in the ground, and lived by grazing on any plants it could reach.